it is hard to come by. Once a year, I am able to obtain willow ash from the burning pile of failed baskets from the workshop of Lin Lovekin, a talented basket-weaver. She grows her own willow on her land here in Cornwall.
I like the idea of using willow ash from baskets, as one theory suggests that the very f irst pots in prehistoric times were, in fact, baskets layered with clay to carry water. As they were discarded on the f ire, the clay hardened and turned to pot fragments, which may have sparked the idea for the invention of pottery.
In 2017, my Falmouth studio was featured on KBS Korean television in a programme about European artists inspired by Korean art. This led to an invitation from UNESCO-awarded Master moon jar maker, Professor Young Gi Seo. Making the moon jar in Korea, I learned to listen to the clay in a different way. I will always be very grateful for this enriching and transformative artistic experience, full of cultural exchange.
By 2019, this unique collaboration culminated in a joint show at the National Korean Craft Museum in Cheongju, as well as a three-month residency of Master Young Gi Seo at my Falmouth studio to prepare for our joint show, Cornwall to Korea, curated by Dr Matthew Tyas at the Leach Pottery Museum in St Ives.
In 2020, while exhibiting at Collect with Studio Pottery London, I had the pleasure of meeting Jin Soo Park, director of the Han Collection. This resulted in an invitation to contribute in 2021 to a group exhibition in London at the Han Collection, entitled Moon Jar: A Piece of Happiness, alongside contemporary Korean moon jar artists Kim Sy young, Shin Gyoungkun, Song Gijin, and British makers Adam Buick and Lisa Hammond. As a non-Korean artist, I appreciate and understand the moon jar from a Western perspective. To me, it represents the aspiration of every craftsperson – an unselfconscious purity of form and intention.
The moon jar is also a work of art with universally recognisable appeal, standing at the intersection of pottery and sculpture, as it is thrown, assembled and fully turned. I see the moon jar as a graceful, harmonious and peaceful community pot. Noble in presence, it is imbued with symbolic meaning. Rising up from the earth, it reaches fullness at its middle, then rises again towards the heavens, where it holds itself. It is said that to make a good moon jar, it should be made with such generosity of spirit that one could put the universe inside it.
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58 January/February 2025
