Experimenting with Terracotta

It’s hard to resist the rich depths of terracotta, it reminds us of warm summers in Europe, where terracotta pots are celebrated with an abundance of colourful flowers in sun-drenched gardens. We love nothing more then a trip down memory lane, and decided to create a vase that transported us back to those relaxed, carefree moments.

Part of the fun of creating new pieces is the experimentation, we discovered that by mixing varying shades of clay we could create a really deep, earthy shade of terracotta. To create the beautiful smoke fired effect we fired the vase for a little longer than usual, the shade of terracotta changes depending on how long it is fired, so you can create brighter or deeper tones just by firing it for different lengths of time.

For this piece, as we are for most of our ceramics, we were inspired by nature, specifically the organic curves of a seed pod. All our ceramics are handmade, and on this occasion, we used a traditional coil building technique, rolling clay into long cylinders, and stacking them together before shaping the vessel and moulding the layers together. This traditional method gives each piece such a lovely rustic finish with oodles of personality. We finished the vase with a soft, off-white glaze around the rim that we applied with a traditional hake brush.

This is the first of several pieces that we are creating for our upcoming launch of vases, so keep your eyes peeled!