Initially designed and made for Potfest 2022 maker’s competition Rooted in the past, planted in the present, my Willow Vegetable Collection is inspired by my old allotment. I enjoyed playing with, designing and making them so much I decided to make them a permanent collection.

Over the years I have found lots of pottery fragments, mainly with blue and white and Willow Pattern, while digging over the ground on the allotment. The patterns from the fragments are copied directly onto the vessels, while the vegetables are those grown by me and my friend on the allotment. The form are inspired by an old Spode vase which I have made my own.

Each vessel is a one-off, carefully designed and unique, and made in small batches of no more than five or six. They are decorated using inlay and sgraffito techniques. It takes between 1.5 and 7.5 hours to decorate each piece depending on the size of the vessel and complexity of the surface decoration.

If you would like to learn more about the collection, why not read my diary entries about it in my diary? Willow Vegetables and The Continued Story of My Willow Vegetables. And if you would like to own a Willow Vegetable Vessel, you can buy them from my shop here. Some of the vessels below are also available to own and have the prices written in the caption.

Fields Collection

These pots are made to be used every day in your home, to bring joy and pleasure to the simple moments of life - drinking tea from your favourite mug at breakfast, eating apple crumble from a bowl after dinner, grabbing a utensil for the jar when cooking dinner for friends and family. It is the stories that grow with the pots that are important.

I‘ve always been drawn to the lines in the agricultural landscape, not knowing exactly why. Is it the softness? the gentle curves of the hills? or the parallel lines? Not knowing why is part of the enjoyment for me. I decorate each one slightly differently so that it is one of a kind.

Some pieces have added details of objects found in the landscape - trees, farm buildings, tractors and birds.

Archive

The Linear Collection is strongly inspired by an old galvanised bin and the windows of Julie Ayton’s studio. Seeing what happens when a straight line is drawn on a curved surface intrigues me; exploring how the shape of the form is softly accentuated by the curve of the line which can go in an unexpected direction. It has a life of its own. My aim is to balance this with the relationship of decorated to undecorated surface area and the effect it has individually and as a group.

My first collection of pieces, designed during my apprenticeship. Slip decoration, through brushing and trailing, is a satisfying process which creates beautiful results with an apparent simplicity. Coloured with natural oxides and stains, the brushwork gives a variation in tone, texture and richness. The slip-trailed leaf motifs are used to incite tactile quality to the pieces.

A selection of the work I made during the DCCoI Pottery Skills and Design Course and at Limerick School of Art and Design in Ireland.