Lisa makes wheel thrown tableware from her Northumberland home studio. Pots are made in short runs, or families, to keep the balance between small scale production throwing and form making. She likes to use a rough local clay, and uses clay slips gathered from places she has been. At the moment she is using one from the island of Aegina in Greece which is particularly pleasurable to brush on the pots. It still smells of the sweet wild herbs that grow on the hillside where it was collected. The glazes she uses are usually oriental style using washed ash and powdered stone. She fires in a wood kiln.
Before becoming a potter Lisa studied anthropology and worked as a chef. An enduring interest in what we eat and the rituals of dinner informs her making. Influences are various. She has loved looking at Chinese and Korean pots in the Victoria and Albert Museum and using Spanish and Portuguese earthenware cooking pots over the fire. Lisa also appreciates the clean lines of a pared back Scandinavian aesthetic.
Lisa gained a Ceramics Foundation degree from Newcastle College where the teaching, from Jess Cohen, Christine Constant, and Andrew Pentland, gave her a solid grounding in things ceramic. Post studies she did placements with Danish potter Anne-Mette Hjortshøj on the island of Bornholm, and Mike Dodd in Somerset. From both these potters Lisa learned about the joys and vagaries of ash glazes, of using ground stone and wild clay, and about taking the slow way.
Lisa tries to make things that are as pleasing to hold and use as they are to look at.
