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Heart of Darkness
Steve Harrison 2008
Years of concentrated research have gone into making these bowls. These pieces are like no other in that their provenance is known from their source in the soil to their exhibition in the gallery.
No-one makes clay like this anymore and I think that is a shame. It's not even clay in the usual sense.
On the surface of each rock granule there is a tiny layer of particles that have been liberated from the stone as it decomposes over the millennia, turning imperceptibly - atom by atom - into clay.
Rock fragments I have selected are spread out to dry on the workshop floor and then roughly crushed, so that when I stir them vigorously in a bucket of water the kaolin coating rinses off and dissolves. This is best done by hand. When a machine is used it breaks up the rock too much, creating something far too rock-like and not clayey enough. Stirring is gentle and achieves the purpose exactly.
This process is repeated over and over, slowly building up a clay slip which is then left to flocculate and be adjusted befare decanting. Adjustment in this case means adding same acid.
I spent the first 6 months of the year liberating and
concentrating the clays for this show. This clay embodies the essence of my intellect’s integration with the area in which I live.
I feel strongly someone should be doing this. I love the result so much; it can’t be gained in any other way. This jet-black, dry matt surface is so rich and dark and rewarding, like a plum pudding made with suet. What it brings out from my ground rock glazes when fired with local wood or clippings is something special which gives this work its marque.
As this clay is fragile and sensitive the bowls must be thick to increase their strength. I have had to fire each one an an individually crafted ceramic plaque to prevent it melting into the kiln shelf. Traces of their setting in the kiln remain embedded in the foot rings. The ground-rack glazes have developed a rich dark patina with rusty iron rims where the glaze has melted away thickening at the foot in same instances, revealing an opacity and opulent richness that I don‘t often see. There are occasionally tiny fragments of my hand-made, local weathered white-bauxite fire bricks embedded in the softening glaze as they slowly spall away, and the outer surface is sometimes blushed to opalescent blue or yellow with small deposits of natural fly ash from the firing.
Steve Harrison |
