GETTING STARTED…

But where to start.. well, I attended a rather academic Grammar School in Barnstaple and discovered Art among a whole range of subjects I found difficult to chose from. So when I got back to school to start my 6th form studies the begowned master said" And what subjects for you then, Cockram? I said "Art, English Lit. and French" and he said "No, no. We need people in science - Zoology, Botany and Chemistry - next?"
So that was that - It wasn't good to argue then - this was 1964 - and so like a wimp I did as I was told. It was many years before that 'decision' was changed.

However, I enjoyed my science and it turned out I wasn't too bad at it. I took a Zoology degree and specialised in Marine Ecology which involved lots of lovely diving of course and - well an active student life generally. ( At one point whilst diving to count 'critters' I found a WW2 landing craft on the seabed. We raised it with air from our tanks, cleaned it off, then full of students, we steamed across the Solent to see Hendrix at the Isle of Wight rock festival. Those were the days…)

This was all followed by some postgraduate research and teaching along the way.

AND THEN…..
Whilst teaching, all the 6th form students would bring their lunch and hang around in the lab, looking in the aquariums etc --- all, that is, except one. He would just nip out and disappear for an hour or so. Well, one day I simply followed him. He left the sanctity of the science block, made his way to the pottery studio and made pots for an hour. AND THAT, AS THEY SAY, WAS THAT.......... I just had to have a go.

I still have my first horrible pot made then, but on moving to London a short while later, I soon set up a purely amateur workshop in the loo of a rented house in Ealing. On the advice of Steve Course - ( late of Dartington Pottery) - I bought a Rayefco wheel from the marvellous Mervyn Fitzwilliam, used wood ash from the grate and fired my pots in a crossdraft kiln thrown together from storage heater bricks in the back garden.

Now this is DEFINITELYone of those "don't do this at home" stories. To preheat the kiln I bought a plastic hosepipe, attached one end to the gas tap in the kitchen and the other to a gas poker about 25 yards away in the firebox. Well… it worked. The kiln was fired with the crudest of burners. I flattened the nozzle of an old cylinder vacuum cleaner (reversed so as to blow not suck of course), until the hole was about one quarter of an inch diameter. Then I wired it to a length of copper pipe leading to a long run of 'home brew' plastic tubing and a 10 gallon drum of paraffin set on the garden wall to provide a pressure. The copper pipe was set so as to drip paraffin into the 'jet of the burner and the flow was controlled with a chemistry 'clip/tap'. One lighted match and I had an 8 foot flame - fantastic!
I'm pleased to say that that moment of pyromania has never left me - although when I look at my modern burners now with their double safety cutouts, I do wince a little as I describe that first firing.

All this of course was just a hobby. It took many failures and so called 'self-teaching' before I began to really take it seriously. However, as chance would have it, my research funding began to run dry and at the same time I discovered the Studio Pottery course at Harrow School of Art! -- oh yes and I got married.

I've worked it out since that I must have been the last student that the blessed Mick Casson chose for that course and that September when I started (1973), Mick was winding down his teaching there. We had him for one good year only.
So for the following 2 years we all did enough potting to cover 3 years in any normal course. It was a sort of crazy/wonderful compressed apprenticeship - very long hours and the steepest learning curve of my life. We had brilliant teachers coming in for one or two days a week:- Mick Casson, Wally Keeler, Russell Collins, the inspirational Colin Pearson and Mo Jupp. I could go on. Not bad eh? I remember a conversation with Colin P. " Well Roger you've learnt to biscuit fire and glaze, now I'll show you how to avoid doing so. ( I've once-fired my pots ever since - earthenware, stoneware and even porcelain.)

Anyway, when Harrow finished I came back to North Devon and set up a small studio next to an even smaller cottage. I built a 100 cu.ft. catenary-arched kiln, ( which was at first so badly insulated that by the end of the firing it would gently glow…) and fired it with wood for the beautiful effects - (and the pyromania). Those were the days of brown kitchens and brown pots. I made casseroles, bread bins, Devonshire pitchers, tankards etc - and once-fired everything to cone 10-11. I mixed the clay in an old bath by treading it with bare feet and used a local Devon ball clay mixed with a clay bearing sand from Cornwall. You simply haven't lived until you've trodden wet clay! That lasted from spring till autumn, after that the clay simply got too cold to tread - so I borrowed £200 from the bank and bought an old bakers cake mixing machine. Less pain -- and it's still in use today - as is the bath, as a receptacle for reclaiming clay.

The bricks for the kiln I found at the local power station at Yelland - which was closing down. I went along to beg some bricks but a "jobsworth" sort of man with a desk and a card-filing system told me he would have to sell them to me at the price they had paid for them. I have to say I nearly gave up at that point until he then told me that his precious card filing revealed that they had bought them in 1936! -- I had my bricks.

The kiln was fired with softwood off cuts from a local sawmill and because the rather inadequate fireboxes tended to choke up by about cone 10, I hit on the idea of blowing air into the ash in the fireboxes using some old Harrow oil burners that I had made at college. This worked quite well in spreading the ash into the kiln but I began to get nervous about the cold air and decided to turn on the oil as well. Thus the last soak to cone 11 was achieved with much less angst and I used the procedure for the following 10 years.

After 3 years of rather cramped potting mixed in with some part time teaching, we moved to Higher Northcott Farm - an ancient pile of outbuildings and a thatched farmhouse which needed a new roof. This was good in that it had lots of space for the pottery and to store the firewood for the kiln, but terrible in that it was so far off the beaten track that no-one could find us. This in turn led to few retail sales and consequentially, dreadful cold-selling trips around the country trying to sell pots from a cardboard box to gallery owners who didn't need a grubby potter messing up their neat selling space. I just had no idea - but by goodness, I soon learnt.

We are now at the time of Mrs Thatcher's recession in the early 80's and I suddenly found the domestic ware stopped selling - disaster. However, I had been experimenting with some small porcelain bowls and bottles designed to catch some ash from the wood firing - and these started to sell quite well especially in rather smart little galleries who would never have even looked at my domestic wares. In fact the porcelain kept us going - along, that is with the occasional large cider jar - remember those?

The mid 80's brought another change. I had had a busy life - trying to grow the pottery, keep some bees, some sheep and bringing up 3 children as well. However, in 1986, sadly my 1st marriage came to an end and this led to yet another ( and final ) move to Chittlehampton.
As part of my sadness at all this, I took to walking along the rocky coastline of North Devon and it was in this environment that a whole new direction opened up for my work. I rediscovered my interest in the natural world of water - the sea - its colours, its rhythms, its movements, the rock pools etc. I had found something which seemed to bring together both my passion for throwing clay - and an external broad theme with which I had had an affinity - and some knowledge - all my life. I realised I could use again all those images from my early science and diving days - only use them differently.

Then I met my lovely wife, Ros, who is herself a painter and worker in textiles and who was very encouraging of my new direction. - " more colour - larger pots - more drawing!" she would say.
So I started painting from the rock pools for the first time - and on the pots too. I worked up many new glazes and vitreous slips ( science really was useful here ) and started applying them in different ways - sponging and stippling etc
All this was with an eye to catch moments I had seen - or situations I could observe and distil into something that works as a pot.
A move to gas was inevitable now and soon followed, but the gain is that the general theme is frankly endless in its possibilities.
I sometimes use fishes that I observe when diving. They cannot help but show movement and rhythm etc.
My most recent interest is in the water itself. I have made some quite large jars and bowl forms with spirals thrown deeply into the form when wet on the wheel - nothing figurative here, just frozen movement - and it has recently given me ideas about the rhythms and "movement" found in music - another passion.

And so it goes on. I started at Harrow making "Leach" pots influenced by the East, then changed to traditional English techniques with slip trailing - now my work has recently been put into the box marked "Arts and Crafts". Who needs 'boxes'?
My only plea to our potting community is that we cherish all potting traditions - rural and industrial, ancient and contemporary. We should look for the person in the work and not be blown by metropolitan fashion - which, to say the least, is fickle.

Well I still look forward to the next kiln, the next glaze test and I'm planning a new kiln for next year - a trolley one this time - to take those new very large 'spiral' pots - and to help my 'potters back'.

Oh yes, and along the way I must have done something right because this coming June 3rd we've been asked to hold a Collectors' Open Day - with kiln opening, exhibition, live music etc. We sent out some invitations in January expecting perhaps approx. 40 people to attend. Imagine our surprise when 180 collectors have accepted our invitation.
The day will have a live band, a 'special' kiln opening, a demonstration, local pasties, strawberries and cream -- you get the idea.
Our little village won't know what's hit it - and I'll have to chat up a farmer to park the cars in his field.
Oh - and the reason? It'll mark the exact 30th anniversary of that first kiln fired 'in anger' - as it were. You never know, we might even make enough to pay for it….

Maybe we'll see you there!

Roger Cockram April 2006
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Chittlehampton Pottery
N. Devon
EX37 9PX

www.roger-cockram-ceramics.co.uk