My participation in the Hereford College of Art's #Get Out Get Inspired initiative in 2021 led me to visit the Netherwood Estate on the beautiful Herefordshire - Worcestershire border. Here I found a ready supply of molehills, tumps of beautiful red clay soil amongst the crops. I made test pinch pots on site, exploring potential for making. Then I took soil to use as a medium for community pinch pot workshops. I did this during HCA's 2022 Ferrous Festival in Hereford and at Spring Greens, an environmentally focused festival held in North Herefordshire. More on this in Making is Connecting - see link below.
After making test tiles and pinch pots, I fired them in my wood-fired cob oven at my Leintwardine studio, reaching temperatures around 750ºC - just into the realms of vitrification.
100s of artefacts were made and fired this way. The pieces reveal a beautiful range of fired colours, touches of carbon from the wood fire, pits where organic matter has burned away, and small colourful stones.