Notes from the studio (2025)

Lately I’ve been locked away in the studio, and in my head. I’ve been thinking about voice, about style, about what it means to make work that is unmistakably my own. It’s easy to lose a grip on those thoughts. Images stack up quickly, trends repeat themselves, and you move from one idea to the next without ever fully arriving anywhere.

 

Most of this year has been spent making work for restaurants, back-to-back commissions, collaborative projects, ongoing conversations. That work has sustained my practice and in many ways, shaped it. I don’t work from a fixed catalogue; each project is built through dialogue. I talk with chefs about the dish, the rhythm of the menu, how the plate should feel in the diner’s hands. I enjoy that exchange. It’s demanding, but it’s rewarding.

 

Arriving at the end of the year, after one commission rolling straight into the next, I began to feel a pull toward something else running alongside it. Something slower. Something authored. Work that reflected not just my skill set, but where I am - both in my practice and in my life.

 

For a while, I assumed that meant change. A more dramatic or recognisable style. I ran through ideas that promised difference - wood firing, wild clays, heavier surfaces, more aggressive forms. Each carried a certain weight, a certain credibility, but none of them felt honest. They felt borrowed.

 

Instead, I chose to slow things down. To stay with a small set of forms long enough to understand what they were asking of me, and to create a different kind of space, one where the work wasn’t immediately read as functional, and where form could exist on its own terms.

 

So I sat at the wheel and cleared my head. I didn’t set out to solve anything. I threw a bowl, flattened the lip, left enough clay at the base to trim a proper foot into later, then put it aside and started again. The same shape emerged. Then again. And again.

 

I might have blamed muscle memory, the habits formed through production work, but my mind felt quiet. The repetition felt intentional, even if I hadn’t named it yet. I’ve always been sensitive to the curve of a bowl, I noticed it years ago, even if I struggled to articulate it. I just know when the belly is right, when the line holds, and when it doesn’t ask for anything more. Of course, this is a personal preference, and one that will keep evolving.

 

As the weeks passed, the shelves filled with variations of that same form, scaled up and down. The shape stayed consistent, but my thinking didn’t. Sitting with it gave me space to reflect on restraint, on what happens when you resist pushing the work toward explanation and instead give it room. This kind of attention is built into the process, but it’s often the first thing to go. Orders need filling. Kilns need loading. Time collapses. What I’m beginning to understand is that the work doesn’t necessarily need to change. The way I approach it does.

 

I’ve also found myself thinking more about distance, something I recognise outside the studio as well. Moving between different stages of work, different roles, and different expectations can create a sense of being between positions rather than securely inside one. Things still relate, but they don’t always sit comfortably together. That tension has begun to shape the work more than any single decision about form or surface.

 

It’s been a challenge trying to answer the question of what feels recognisably mine, particularly when caught between the idea of settling into a style and the desire to keep exploring. I’ve been thinking about how awareness changes confidence. As perception sharpens, certainty doesn’t always follow. Looking back through my archive to find a common thread, earlier work can feel unfamiliar - not because it was wrong, but because I can see it differently now. That shift hasn’t brought immediate relief, but I’m learning to trust my instincts about what matters.