Celia Greenaway Ceramics

Like many others I’m a retirement potter.  Although I first learnt to throw as part of my teaching degree 35 years ago I didn’t get my hands back into clay until I retired in 2012.

Much of my work is made with porcelain and I have recently started using stoneware clay for various functional items.  After throwing and trimming I turn my hand to the decorative processes, which I really love.  I will happily spend hours carving, fluting, stamping and texturing, with design ideas for motifs and patterns being drawn from nature – weeds, wild flowers, seeds and grasses along the highways and byways, the sea and sky.

I like the contrasts of black lines on a white porcelain background and shiny glazed surfaces against the satin matt unglazed porcelain. Both have become features of much of my work. Where I use colour, this is usually subtle blue green tones from underglazes, slips or washes of copper and cobalt oxides.

My ‘Hedgerow’ vessels are decorated using a Mishima technique. The entire surface is painted with wax resist, then I carve the designs through the wax into the leather hard clay.  A wash of black underglaze is brushed over the carved surface and this is absorbed into the lines and resisted by the wax.  Gentle  wiping back with a sponge fully reveals the decoration!  The wax then burns off in the first firing.

I use a glossy transparent glaze, sometimes coloured to achieve various blue/green celadons.  Everything is fired to at least 1240oC in an electric kiln and some pieces are further enhanced with 22ct gold lustre highlights before a third firing to 780oC.

I sell my work from my studio, at Anglian Potters’ selling exhibitions and through Le Strange Old Barns Antiques and Craft Centre in Old Hunstanton, Norfolk.