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They’re here! After four months of experimenting, I finally feel ready to pause, reflect and celebrate the work that’s come out of the studio.

All work will go ONLINE TODAY at 3.30pm —
for you with access code:

GROUNDED

You may enter the site 30 minutes before the shop goes live to the public, for first pickings :)

Three ways
to work with texture

Sand, coffee grounds, grog. Three materials that I have chosen to start with and a thousand ways you could do it.

For the majority of the year, I had it in my head that I wanted to create an all-over texture, a full clay body fully incorporated with these materials. I enjoyed the tactile quality and wanted to let the shapes of the vessels speak for themselves.

See the above vessel as example.

But slowly I began to think a little outside the square and think about new ways to express these new materials in the clay.

Marbelling is a technique I haven’t really done much in the past. Generally you use two clay bodies, a light and dark, layer them together and lightly wedge the two colours together before throwing it on the wheel. This creates wild swirling patterns.

I wondered what this could look like if I used one layer of heavily textured clay, with the materials stated above, and didn’t wedge them together first before throwing it on the wheel (so I could achieve more defined swirls). Turns out this is quite challenging! The two clay bodies are of very different elasticities (the point of wedging is to get an even texture in the clay) and centering proved pretty difficult. It took me a while but slowly I started to get the hang of working with two completely different mediums.

The results are stunning! As seen in the vase above. You can literally see the tension of the clay being pulled up as the vessel spins on the wheel, with sand particles sprayed up like little stars.

A little experiment in a gold luster cut out, mimicking the shape of my logo stamp, which sadly does not show through with this much texture.

And finally, the brush stoke technique.

I had used it to paint on a all-over textured slip with red clay back in February, but to terrible effect…

I hope you enjoyed this little preview and that there’s a piece in the collection that speaks to you. Which is your favourite technique? I’d love to know!

Thank you so much for your enthusiasm in this new journey of mine,

— Monique