inspiration rocks

It was the coldest, bleakest part of this last winter. That was when my right arm was gripped with such intense pain that I had to stop working with the clay. I was not happy! The medical advice was to take a break for a month, but what was I going to do? It turned out that this was an opportunity to completely rethink my making process.

All my forms up to this point had been made by honing them into shape using a metal scraper held in my right hand, and it was the tension in doing that that had led to the pain. I loved that process, and I felt that the gradual refinement of the firms over many days was part of what people perceived in them. I thought that, in some way, it was the source of their calmness and what they communicated. So to be deprived of access to that process was a challenge to what I had come to believe the work was about.

But my commitment is not to the outcome of the making process, it is to the process itself – to try to find a rightness in the making process and see what that quality leads to in the finished pieces. Clearly the scraping that I enjoyed was not right for my arm, so could there be a new way of making that would involve less tension and more balance in my body?

For some reason I had also been reflecting on my early days of recording wildlife sounds which eventually led to my first career in natural history radio. Thinking back to the child who stuck a microphone out of his bedroom window to record the garden bird song I realised how long I have had a fascination with recording the natural world in one way or another. I was thinking how clay also keeps a record of everything that happens to it until it is fired, at which point the story of its making is locked into its form and surface. Maybe thinking of the clay as a recording medium could lead to a new way of working. And so it did.

The other day I went in search of a beach that I last visited almost 20 years ago. It had stayed in my memory because it was covered in perfectly round rocks, like a midden of of abandoned dinsosaur eggs. Something in my now pot-obsessed head was drawing me back there in search of ceramic inspiration.

The beach was near the seaside town of Llantwit Major in South Wales. 20 years ago among the huge piles of boulders and pebbles I remember finding enough hand-sized rock spheres to play a passable game of boules. And I remembered a right angled cleft in the cliffs that faced South West into which the prevailing winds piled in big Atlantic waves. The pebbles and boulders had been turned over and over in this natural stone polisher until smooth and round. So when I went back, knowing roughly the right area, I set of in search of the rock cleft.

When I told my story to some locals and asked if they knew the dinsoaur egg beach they were as polite as they could be, but couldn’t help. I walked along the coast having timed it to arrive at low tide, but on a blowy, grey Autumn day I was very aware that the waves that had ground down the boulders could easily trap me at the cliff base if I lost track of time.

What I soon realised was that 20 years is a long time in the life of a dynamic coast. Not only were there fresh rock falls from the cliffs, but I began to think about the beaches that I’d come to know around St Davids Pembrokeshire when my furniture workshop was there. I had a commission for a sideboard inspired by the rocks at Porthmelgan, but when I took the clients back to see the spot, the winter’s storms had cleared a couple of metres of sand and in that case revealed an entire field of boulders.

I did eventually find my cliff cleft, but not my striking pile of dinosaur eggs. In 2018 there is a much greater variety or rock size and shape, but, thankfully, no less inspiration. So here are some pictures that have already begun to seed ceramic ideas, particularly those seams of iron-rich ochres through the grey stones, the shine of water as it laps around the base of pebbles and the hyroglyphs of erosion and crustacean tracks on the boulder surfaces.

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The other good thing was that Brindley the lurcher had a great day out.

Impressions – a completely new way of working

It was the coldest, bleakest part of this last winter. That was when my right arm was gripped with such intense pain that I had to stop working with the clay. I was not happy! But it turned out that this was an opportunity to completely rethink my making process.

giving bowls / sharing bowls

The Giving Bowls have just raised over £350 for the Stroud District Foodbank. I’m delighted. They seems to have found a real purpose in life, and their development is a story that is still giving life lessons to me.

Clay, nature and us – an interview

An interview with Grant about his creative life and the 2023 exhibition.

grant sonnex ceramics

inspiration rocks

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Impressions – a completely new way of working

giving bowls / sharing bowls

Clay, nature and us – an interview