Ian Morrison

My work is a contemporary look a country pottery. I focus on line, surface, and balance. I want my pots to convey an honesty about why and how they were made and for me the salt glazing process is a perfect application to achieve this. The pots, heavily salt glazed become incredibly tactile as well as showing my hand at work, as the maker, not hiding but instead highlighting the subtle marks, fingerprints from handling, and attachments in a tasteful way. This process allows me to make pots with subtle and clean lines that are very approachable and usable while giving the work that extra durability that comes from the firing process.

The pots are made from stoneware that has been specially formulated to deal with the stress of salt glazing. The work is thrown on the wheel and sometimes altered. All of the work is lined with a wood ash glaze that gives a good variation throughout the kiln chamber. The pots are then fired for 36-40 hours with propane in a 110 cubic foot hard brick downdraft kiln that I built to produce this range. The long reduction cycle helps to really develop the iron in the clay to give me good colour in the clay and the liner glaze. Once a reasonable layer of salt glaze has been achieved on the surface of the clay, I continue so salt the kiln directionally using the strong downdraft and large chamber in order to achieve a slightly heavier orange peel on one side of each pot to give the work varied surface around the form. I find this process gives me work that is not uniform throughout the chamber and allows me to achieve a vast range of subtle colour variations in each firing.

My work is a contemporary look a country pottery. I focus on line, surface, and balance. Salt glaze is tactile, durable, and honest, which is what I want my work to convey.