We caught up with the hard to pin down ceramicist Miranda Berrow
GROWING UP
On the move!
We changed house, home, country, continent, place, school, friends, and language a great many times in the first 10 years of my life. The only constant was family.
They are spread all over the world, but each year we summered together in the South of Spain, back in the days when there no developments, no postal deliveries, no marked railway crossings and the beaches were empty scorching sand dunes which you had to navigate stone by stone to get to the water.
Donkeys and dusty roadside chiringuitos for Fanta and ChupaChups, Uncles, Aunties, cousins, French, German, Scots, bullfighters, horse riders, old and young alike.
Sharing cartoon books and siesta-ing in the children’s garrets, whilst the ‘grownups”( mostly in the 30’s) finished their boozy noisy lunches late into the afternoon.
That camaraderie and adventure together collecting pine nuts and ants in matchboxes, bee stings and roof climbing have made a bond around my heart, one that I hold close and have passed not to my children, the treasure that is the experience of inclusive open sharing mealtimes and quiet times, noisy times with friends, family and strangers.
WHERE YOU LIVE
The Jurassic coast where I live in is an unexpected place on this tiny island of ours.
Nestled into the south coast it is miles and miles of undeveloped coastal land owned and shared with the National Trust.
It is ever-changing. It is a place where life is still at a pace that creates a community, it is far enough from a motorway or rail station that people hesitate to stop off, tourism is happy campers and a few intrepid weekenders.
I deeply love the landscape, the miniature hilliness of the place, the twisty narrow roads, the unexpected plunging away of a vista, it is on a human scale, and most of all it is by the sea, my favourite place.
A place of delight and joy and pleasure and a place to buffer the nonsense out of ones busy head on a blustery afternoon and challenge one’s complacency by braving the cold waters with a dip in January.
My studio is nestled in the far corner of a magnificent ancient courtyard of thatched barns, which the owners have developed into a wedding venue, Art Gallery with a variety of shops and food and a village hub Cafe shop.
How did you come to Pottery
I pot now because I had to do something creative, I become twitchy and annoying if I do not channel that energy somewhere.
I could paint or weave, knit or draw, or be a fashion designer which is what I trained as at St Martins Art School in London in the post-punk New Romantic 1980s which seems a lifetime ago.
I had gone to Uni in Paris in 1977 signed up to be an archaeologist on a three-course at the Louvre to study Art History but also wanted to go to Afghanistan and Iran in 1979!
Dreams….. but that is it isn’t it?
It’s the colours and smells as much as the place, it is the people you meet and stop off with as much as the food that you try, the discomfort that makes you appreciate home, the languages and gestures that leave you with a new a deeper understanding of connection and humanity.
Back to potting, really I am self-taught. Partly because I find reading glaze recipes and "how-to”…online very difficult and partly because I got started in the process whilst my children were very young, and coiling is a clean, tidy, manageable way to create with clay, whereas “throwing “ requires a fair bit of time to tidy up, and clean and so on.
I have been over many years to different courses particularly in the early days, but I got hooked on ‘coiling much encouraged by a Brazilian teacher at an ILEA course that I did, where she explained that I could if I wanted to make huge coils and build faster if that was what I wanted to do…! I never looked back.
Many a good lesson has been well learned by making mistakes.
Anything goes so long as you can manage the disasters and experiments without fearing the results.
I have learned to manipulate the underglazes and oxides that I use, that is the colours and the glazes which I inherited from the lady from whom I bought an old kick wheel, kiln and many unlabelled pots of mostly brown or black oxides about 20 years ago.
What are you looking forward to?
I am looking forward to attending a few glazes courses and learn to throw once more.
Once I have rebranded and sorted out the pile-up that is my fabulous colour-filled business!
I can no longer manage the lists lost on bits of paper in the car or studio when I need them online, the accounts that never get invoiced properly and the discomfort that leaves me with as each January approaches.
The designs and shapes of work that you sell online
Have been developed as practical interpretations of the work that I began with.
I am not an ornament person, I dislike clutter.
I DO like (LOVE) pattern and colour and texture, but I also like objects to be useful and practical, but beautiful. An object that you look forward to using for a very specific reason or purpose. A whimsy perhaps….but a thoughtful use of an object, a pleasure to use, something that becomes a habit, and hopefully brings you joy
Your favourite ‘find’
The handles and the shapes of the mugs have been designed with a precise purpose in mind, they tell my story. They are the result of a stolen colour seen somewhere, worn by somebody, at a time that I was observing, consciously listening or imbibed by me.
The dash pattern that a lot of my work is decorated with came from a simple rough homemade-looking brush called a Hake brush. I found it in the treasure trove that is our local art shop in Dorchester called Herrings, I had no idea what to do with it other than it was good for glazing I bought one, and now I have many, each one is different a few more hairs here or there, he colour thread that holds them stitched together makes each one a character to be used for all the different application dash plain, ribbed, glazed surfaces that I use them for. They’re made of goats hair, and hold the liquid really well and held on its side and applied carefully it forms the pattern.
I prefer the random development of an idea rather than the controlling influence and discipline of the wheel.
My Studio
I spent many months at the beginning asking myself why I was making and who would want these weird wobbly looking things, talking myself out of the studio.
When things really did take a turn for the worst in my life that is where I went….straight back in the studio it was a place of solace and solitude, a profound distraction and at the end of most days, I was thrilled with what I had made and returned home in anticipation of what would come out of the kiln the following morning.
A place to allow the clay to speak and a place to doodle to my heart’s content.
I go almost every day to the studio and will stay until it is time to go home often late into the evening If I am working on something that needs finishing.
Sometimes it is the rim that is exactly dry enough to be “finished” other times it needs me to stop and look at it afresh in the morning, I wrap it up carefully sealed until the next time.
I know that as I coil build a piece I am aiming to create a place or a person or a meal, situation or a pattern that has evoked a response in me, and with the person that later buys my work, I have joined it and them to me, to be enjoyed and loved.
I went through a stage when I was coiling last summer of incising words or even stories on the News headlines on the underside of the vessels. One read “ I should have been a teapot”, the piece dried too quickly and remained without a handle or lid but made a good pot
Over many years I have developed a very happy working relationship with a family run business in Sri Lanka in Colombo where I go in January / February most years to work on new ideas and designs. I have trained a few patient women who to produce the “Dash “ pattern on the mugs and they then complete the process and send the work by ship, individually packaged ready to supply shops and clients.
I had to grow my little pottery “doodling “to a form of self-supporting economically viable kind of business so that was after a few bumpy years trying to develop the product in Stoke on Trent, that is how I found myself working on the other side of the world in the extreme heat in SriLanka, The powers above were on my side again….. It is a factory, but a small one and everything is made by hand and decorated by a team of giggling smiling gorgeous women.
The brothers that run it are charming and very exacting. Quality control is an ethos, not a chore.
It is a calm quiet haven of a place far from the hurly-burly of fast and furiously up and coming, Colombo.
I feel truly blessed to have their support.
Favourite Books
The Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico magical realism,, romance and imagination
Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fornier a coming of age dream
Braided Sweet Grass by Robin Wall Kimmerer a book of magical Botany and wisdom
Music
Harvest Moon
Neil Young
Francois Hardy
Al Green
If you weren’t a potter
I might have been an architect or product designer, I create and recreate houses, rooms and spaces. I am for ever shifting things about in my home and my head. I could spend hours lost in reverie trawling through magazines on architecture and design, Dezzen or Cabana Magazine. I love a problem function or form?
Favourite Shop
My Favourite shop is without a doubt the Old Albion on St Michaels trading estate in Bridport belonging to Sharon Bradley . A place to meet up, share the week’s adventures and a take away from the Red Brick, and set the world to rights. Sharon travels weekly to ransack and pillage old factories, refectories and rectories, and returns in her bright yellow van with a collection of soft leathers from a glove factory, French labels, tea trolleys from a factory, or even a merry go round from a travelling fair.
Favourite restaurant
Obviously, I could not fail to mention my daughter Grace. She is the open-air chef on the beach in Soller, Mallorca at Patiki Beach a place of sunshine and dreams, nothing fancy about it just good vibes and a source of all great flavours from Mallorca magically transformed into a truly extraordinary meal that you will never forget. Only local and only seasonal food.
But less of the family, Leilas in London near Arnold Circus, is my second favourite place for a meal in London.
Your Favorite Potter
Hylton Nel. A lovable rogue. I realised that pottery was a vehicle for so much more than the Craft of throwing clay. It is in his case a crazy shape, a vehicle for fun, cheek and pattern, a letter.
Your favourite companion
I have travelled for years and Cato, my disgruntled feline ceramic companion is never far from central a place in the home.
Who sells your pottery?
I have long and faithful relationships with many of the shops that I supply. The indomitable Libby Blakey was the first person to sell my wobbly efforts and still does to this day 15 years on.
I am excited to be supplying new young entrepreneurial shops like Emily's Straw London on Columbia Road with all her fabulous display of vintage and newly designed wicker baskets and as thrilled to be on the shelves at Fortnum and Mason once again once it reopens, as I am to be represented at Collate in Axminster in Dorset amongst Naomie's collection of carefully curated local artists.