I’ve been making pots for most of my life. It’s a strange thing, to be excited by something as simple as a brown clay jug and I can’t explain it, but it seems that it happens to some people; it just gets under your skin.

At the age of eleven, I first encountered medieval pottery. My headmaster, a keen archaeologist would take us on trips to formerly inhabited sites, commonly ploughed fields, where our eyes would scour the furrows in search of fragments of pottery. Back in the school room, he would show us photographs of the type of pottery that these shards had once formed a part of. The experience gave me my understanding at the time, of what I considered pottery made by hand looked like. This aesthetic has formed the basis of my work ever since.

I studied at Derbyshire College of HE back in the 1980’s, when higher education was properly funded, student numbers were low and resources were plentiful. It was a great time to be studying – I realise this increasingly, as my two sons are soon to enter a university system that, in terms of quality, is not comparable - we were very lucky. The course was tailored to provide a wide range of skills, in many disciplines within the vast spectrum of ceramic practice. Nothing however, appealed to me more than working in red earthenware clay, decorated simply, with a basic palette of slips made from natural raw materials, fired in a kiln, fuelled with wood. This is how I still work today.

Devon has been my home for over twenty years now. I can’t imagine ever wanting to live elsewhere. My workshop is hidden deep in the countryside and the surrounding natural environment fills me with inspiration and wonder, as it has for generations of potters before me.

Furthermore, the Devon countryside provides the raw materials for my pots and I have recently started to use clay which is dug from plentiful seams in the field in front of my workshop.

It is a popular misconception, that to follow a traditional route is a safe and easy option. The skills presented by the master craftspeople of the past, set an extraordinarily high standard to which the contemporary maker must aspire. To seek to find one’s own distinctive voice amongst many who are using the same language, is a challenge that I take upon myself each and every day.