Producer

Clovy T Pottery is a small business; I hand make and design every piece that I sell. I make tableware that melds utility to sculptural liveliness. It is fired in a soda atmosphere, which gives the bare clay surfaces an earthy, variegated texture, and my traditional Asian glazes depth and variety. I design my pots as a fluid interplay between those contrasting surfaces, creations that look grown, as much as made. They are made to be a pleasure for both the eye and the hand.
My pots are constructed around a concept that I call zygoplasia. It’s a word that I put together out of spare parts, which individually mean ‘a pair yoked together’, and ‘cellular multiplication and growth’. I think of my glazed and soda-fired clay surfaces as two layers of tissue that overlap each other, parting to reveal one or the other, but intertwined to make one vessel. I like to blur the boundaries between different parts of the pot’s anatomy, and between the surface and the form. They encourage the user to explore them, while remaining inviting to hold and eat from.

I throw each piece individually on the wheel, then I take it through a series of alterations that include adding clay, cutting down, darting, ovalling, slip brushing, and carving. They are fired once to a low temperature, and then I divide the surface into glazed and bare, and I glaze selectively using a wax resist technique. Then they are ready for their final firing to 2400 degrees. The kiln takes around a day to reach temperature, and once it has, I spray a solution of soda ash in water. It fuses to the surface of the bare clay and gives it a soft, earthy texture and coloring. The colors depend on the exact temperature, atmosphere, and amount of soda, so every pot leaves the kiln with a unique and unrepeatable surface. The high heat makes them very resilient: they are microwave and dishwasher safe, and handled with care should have a very long life in your kitchen.