A pot and a linen shirt are not the same object, but they belong in the same kitchen. Both are hand-scale. Both soften with use. Both tell you where they came from when you look at them carefully. I spend a lot of time around ceramicists because their work teaches me things about my own — about patience, about letting a material have its say, about knowing when to stop.
Kate Clark
Kate Clark's K Ceramics in London produces hand-carved pottery in neutral glazes, rustic in the thoughtful sense of the word. Her vessels have the presence of things that have been held. You can feel, looking at them, that she knows what a cup ought to weigh in a hand and how a bowl should sit on a table. That attention to the small relationship between object and body is the same attention I try to bring to how a sleeve falls or where a linen hem lands.
Adam Buick
Adam Buick works in Pembrokeshire and fires his pots with wood. His spare, quiet vessels are shaped by the Welsh coast in a way you can almost read off them. He has kept his practice small and specific, which I think is part of why his work has the weight it does. A wood firing is a commitment, a risk, a conversation with fire. The pots that survive that conversation have been changed by it, and they carry that change honestly.
Sabine Schmidt Pottery
Sabine Schmidt works in Devon with Cornish clay, making rural, quietly confident stoneware. Her work has the specific calm that a lot of British country ceramics has — not humble, not quaint, just very sure of itself. She does not need to shout, because the pots are good. That kind of confidence takes years to earn, and it is recognisable instantly.
The linen tops we make in Bulgaria belong in a kitchen with pots like these. They will crease. They will stain a little. They will be better for both.