Ceramics Studio Coop switched to 100% renewable electricity this week. All electricity we use comes from 100% renewable sources like sun, wind and water. Big thanks to our energy supplier Octopus Energy.
We 100% green energy to fire your pottery and sculptures, to keep our classroom and workshops warm. It’s one more step towards ‘net-zero’.
We pleased to have this opportunity finally: 100% green energy was not supplied to our industrial estate in Lewisham even a year ago! Find out more about what 100% green energy is, and how our suppliers support generation of green energy in our grid here. What does it mean to choose a green energy supplier?
Please wash your hands more often than usual and when you arrive, and before you leave the studio. Soap and paper towels will be provided for handwashing.
Face covering is not a requirement in the studio. However, we encourage everyone who has cold symptopms or recent contact with Covid-positive persons to use a face covering while visintg us. Distancing is not always possible in a workshop or during a class.
Our studio has an air circulation system that brings fresh and filtered air from the outside, it helps to keep the space well ventilated and safe to use. We also use HEPA and UV-C Light equipped air purifiers in the studio to maintain air quality.
If you forgot your mask, disposable medical face masks are available if you wish to use one. Please ask a member of staff.
Please, do not come in, if you have tested positive for COVID-19 or have any COVID-19 symptoms. Stay at home, self-isolate, and get a test.
Use of a face covering is compulsory in the studio to all users to make sure 1m+ distancing advice can be maintained. Unfortunately, not all areas of the studio have space to keep 2m distance. We decided in favour of using a face covering with advice of The British Medical Association, and we ask all members to adhere to this decision.
If use of a face covering is problematic or not possible, we will ask members to postpone the return to the studio, and firing service customers to delay their visits until this rule can be relaxed.
Thank you for your cooperation. It is greatly appreciated.
We are delighted to share that we have received an offer of support from Arts Council England as a part of Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund. This Grant will be used towards the costs of running the studio at the time when we have to stop or minimize our activities, and next 6 months of operational costs.
We are humbled by and grateful for this support, and it is a turning point for our organization. From thinking about survival we can now focus on plans for reopening, supporting our community and bringing back services.
This grant for us is also a recognition of our contribution towards publicly funded arts though work we do teaching pottery and ceramics, serving as a ground for talent development and a place of excellence in making.
We have worked from the early stages of the “lockdown” trying to secure funding or any local authority support, which was futile for a long time. It had been a hard time of co-working, crunching numbers, attending seminars, emergency planning and bare minimum. This acknowledgement by Arts Council England is a testimony to the persistence of our team, our collective faith in the possibility of the positive outcome for our organization.
Thank you for all the support, and positive thoughts you were and are sending us. Your goodwill and care gave us a chance to get where we are now. Despite that the future is so unpredictable to many of us, we hope studio will be an island of stability for many in our making community, we are standing in solidarity with organizations, artists and makers who are facing difficulty at the moment.
Now more than ever we miss having our makers and students around, and we hope we can all be making together soon.
Our students contact us a lot about basic advice on working with clay in their homes or personal studios, so we are sharing our knowledge and tips on best practice. This post will cover things that are good to know, from basics of safety to good tips on storage and transportation of work from your home to the nearest kiln.
Health and Safety
The most important thing to consider and be aware of when working with clay, is that clay contains respirable crystalline silica (silica). Very fine invisible material that may cause severe respiratory illness, if not sufficiently controlled. Working with clay is generally safe, and silica becomes a problem for us only when our clay dries out, (or if we handle it in a form of powder). For this reason make sure:
no dry scraps are left lying around
adopt “clean as you go” method
avoid dry sweeping that will raise dust in the air
avoid using clay in carpeted spaces, as dust will be too difficult to remove
always mop the floor and wet sponge the surfaces after you are finished.
These basic steps will ensure making with clay is a safe and lovely process to share and enjoy.
Storing work
If you need to store your work to return to your projects later, it is a common practice to wrap your pieces in plastic. You can use a regular plastic bag. Check for holes, as they may speed up drying. One can keep the work indefinitely if it is wrapped well, sprayed with water, and kept airtight. So you can return to your projects after a break.
When you finish your project, let your piece dry out naturally in a room temperature. Your greenware is ready for a firing when it is dry.
Planning and materials
When you are deciding to work with clay, consider what materials you would like to use. If you worked in a supported environment before, did you use earthenware clay or stoneware? If you do not have a potter’s wheel at home, as the majority of makers, you can work on your handbuilding. Consider clays that are good for this technique. Usually ceramics suppliers will be able to advise you. Consider the scale of work, and the results you would like to achieve, and what will be possible to fire. Here is our list of trusted ceramics suppliers.
Kilns, transportation and packaging
The work is bone dry, when it is no longer cold to the touch at room temperature. It means we can safely load it into a kiln, and be confident the work will not blow up in a firing. When your piece is bone dry, it is time to take your pieces to get fired.
From our experience of running Firing Service
Cornstarch packing peanuts or its friend, vermiculite, are highly effective for transporting complex shapes. They can be easily “poured” around irregular shaped objects and provide a cushion against shock during handling and transportation.
If you are making stackable shapes – make sure you have cushioning between pieces when you are packing them into containers that will carry them. Make sure that none of the pieces are touching. It will help you to minimize breakages. You can use bubble wrap, a couple of layers of newspaper, shredded paper, or other packing material.
If you made flat or long pieces – use a stiff board for transportation, so the work does not flex when you move it. It will increase the chances of your greenware arriving to a kiln in one piece.
If you are working with porcelain or very fragile work, it may make sense to bring it to a studio that will do a firing for you in a leatherhard state. Thin pieces will dry out quickly and will not cause much nuisance, and can be transported to kiln shelves safely.
Kiln Firing
If you are making work that will be fired by someone else, take notes on your materials, your supplier, and any advice that is available about the materials you are using. Help your kiln technician to make the right decisions on a kiln programme that will guide how your pieces fire.
Don’t forget that it is unsustainable to fire half-empty kilns, and make your work well, so it can share a kiln with other pieces!
Bisque fired work can be glazed immediately and fired again, or kept indefinitely before it is glazed. It is important to make sure your work is dust-free before glazing. Also, don’t forget to check the temperature range of the materials before applying glaze.
If a step-by-step guide on the process is helpful for you, read our outline of the ceramics process here, and check out firing service page if you wonder how to access kiln firings in our studio.
We unfortunately have to close for visitors/ and work collection due to pandemic, and “Stay at home” policy. We will be closed until it is safe to open again.
No recently made work will be thrown away at time of the pandemic. If you are concerned about work made before January 2020, please email, so we can keep it for you.
If your work is left with Firing Service, we will not throw it away.
Thank you for your understanding and support. Stay safe, and stay at home as much as you can!
We have made a difficult decision to end People’s Pottery Classes and Thursday night pottery for the rest of the term. All classes starting from 17 March will be cancelled to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
We will let you know if it will be possible to make up classes next term. If it is not possible we will be offering refunds.
At this time we hope we will be able to re-open as planned next term, however this will be reviewed, and we will keep you informed.
is not possible we will be offering refunds. At this time we hope we will be able to re-open as planned next term, however this will be reviewed, and we will keep you informed.
There are no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the studio. Despite that our team decided to take precautionary measures to ensure the wellbeing of students, staff and artists.
We will keep all your work in progress and finished pieces, so everyone can pick up on where they stopped and not miss out.
Thank you for your understanding and support in this difficult time. Please take care and we will miss you.
Exhibition open on Friday and Saturday afternoons, 1pm to 5pm
Holly Stevenson, Get Well Soon, 2019
Caroline Fisher Projects is delighted to present the work of ceramicists, Lydia Hardwick and Holly Stevenson
Lydia Hardwick
graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2013. Using surface
techniques, such as inlaying and slip decorating, her working methods
are meditative and intuitive, developed through an understanding of
materials gained over years of working with clay.
Hardwick
is drawn to patterns and motifs found within indigenous craft objects
and textiles, made by communities that attribute great expressive power
to visual things. Intrigued by the mysterious formal vocabulary of folk
geometry, she combines a myriad of making traditions with influences
from European art and design to produce work that aims to reconnect us
to an ancient appreciation of line, surface, tone and texture as
presences unto themselves.
At Caroline Fisher Projects,
traditional ceramic forms will be exhibited alongside abstract material
experiments. Pots, forms that are intrinsic to human creativity, adorned
with pattern will be placed throughout the space, alongside relief
palm-sized ‘swatches’ of clay arranged on the walls of the gallery. The
work will act as a series of meditations on the illusive nature of
meaning in visual things, reawakening personal experiences of place,
pattern and surface.
In 2015, Hardwick collaborated and exhibited with the Turner Prize winning group, Assemble
and showed in the Beazley ‘Designs of the Year’ exhibition at London’s
Design Museum. She is a qualified teacher, regularly delivering
workshops at the Royal Academy of Arts, Whitechapel Gallery and Camden
Arts Centre, London. In 2016 her work with Assemble was acquired by the V&A for their collection.
Holly Stevenson’s
ceramic practice is informed by an intense interest in psychoanalysis
and her sculpture explores how shape and colour might suggest embodied
narratives.
Her ongoing studio project entitled ‘Freud’s
Ashtray’ is inspired by Sigmund Freud’s favourite marble ashtray, still
to be found on his desk at the Freud Museum in Hampstead. The feminine
shaped ovular artefact equipped with the remains of a cylindrical
phallic cigar provide the two modest forms, the oval and the cylinder,
that the artist repeatedly recreates in clay as the foundation stones to
her work. Within the hand built bulging surreal forms meaning becomes
contained: Clay shapes up to take on characters, often adorned with
chains and flowers, so that Narcissus’ pools and Uncanny bouquets develop into brightly glazed ceramic compositions reflecting on tales of quirky bodies, femininity and sensuality.
Stevenson
started to work obsessively with clay in 2016, after a guest residency
in Sichuan, China. She graduated from the Chelsea College of Art and
Design MFA in 2011 with the generous help of the Stanley Picker
Foundation and is currently a resident artist in the Ceramics Studio
Co-op, London. Her work has been shown widely in the UK, Cubitt, The
Barbican, Zabludowicz Collection, Flat Time House, John Latham
Foundation and Gazelli Art House amongst others, as well as in China and
Italy.
Caroline Fisher Projects encourages artists working in clay and other media to realise innovative work that pushes the boundaries of these disciplines.
Over recent years there has been a questioning of the role of ceramic practice within art and craft.
Can a functional object also be an art work? What is the status of making in an art world increasingly obsessed with ideas? How will a new generation of artists learn about ceramic techniques now that there are so few higher level courses that focus on these? How can clay be combined with other media such as film, photography, performance, music and food?
The first floor space at 93a Upper St Giles’ Street, Norwich is an exhibition space but also hosts a ‘Clay Conversation’ on the first Friday of the month at 11am during exhibitions. All welcome to attend.
We are excited to start taking bookings for classes running in the new year. You can click on the classes icons to find out more about each class and make your booking.
If you are keen to join longer and more in-depth session, Thursday mornings are best for you. It is our longest class of 3 hours!
If you are unsure about signing up for 12 weeks – join Friday mornings, which can be booked in half-terms, so you can see if you like it before committing for couple of months.
All our classes have structured introduction into pottery techniques that will allow you to build understanding of ceramics and make your own special pieces.
If you have any questions about the classes in the upcoming year, do get in touch.
Wrestle with the evil clay and shape your ultimate fear!
Take home your very own piece of iconic 80s horror and learn a new
skill.
Tristan Lathey’s porcelain and earthenware pieces modelled for the workshop.
Horror fan and ceramics artist Tristan has 8 years of slab building
experience. He primarily makes cute animals which he exhibits in the
north of England. He has been working at the Ceramics Studio Co-op since
it opened in 2014.
This workshop will be run in a form of a masterclass that is focused
on slab-building and decorating complex shapes and characters. Pieces
created at the workshop will be glazed and fired in the studio after the
class. They will be available for collection in 2-3 weeks.
All materials and firings are included in the price.
