Tim Copsey Inspires A Moon Jar

Tim is an experienced ceramic artist doing a residency within the MA Ceramics Department, he delivered a presentation to us where he talked about his creative career, his journey into ceramics and the things he was working on at the moment, he then gave us a brief demo of some of the processes he uses to make his pieces. 

I also interviewed Tim one to one as research for my written assignment, Research in Context.

I find Tim’s work really interesting, he embraces chance and happy accidents in the pieces he makes and he is really interested in the materiality of clay, he refers to his pieces loosely as vessels, but does not consider functionality as their core purpose. Tim uses a wood burning  kiln that he built when firing his work  at his studio in Yorkshire, he also teaches ceramics at The Sculpture Lounge in Holmfirth.

I was particularly interested in Tim’s process for creating the larger inclusions he has in his pieces, like the Tokura jar, so I was really pleased to see a demo of one of the ways he did this. I had been looking a way of building up the surfaces of a moon jar I had recently made in black clay and wasn’t sure where to go with it. I am inspired by the complex surface textures of Akiko Hirai’s work so was looking at ways to reference some of this in my own surfaces and felt that Tim’s approach could be one way to try and add some thick three dimensional surface texture to the pot.

​Below is Tim showing us some of his making processes.

Following this session I dried some black clay body out on top of the kiln until it was hard enough to break up into shards using a rolling pin. I then pushed these dried pieces into the top area of the coiled moon jar I had made from heavily grogged black stoneware clay body.

I then added white porcelain slip and extruded porcelain texture that I had achieved by pushing porcelain through a sieve. I wanted to use some white slip as I was aware from previous glazing experience that due to the very high levels of Manganese present in black clay, it can be very difficult to see any coloured glazes over black clay.

​Below is the moon jar after bisque with the white slip and extrusions.

I chose to use a more limited palette of glaze colours for this piece, I was hoping if it fired successfully to use this as one of the pieces in my visions of landscape exhibition. 

I used Titanium White, dark blue and pale green glazes and fired the piece in oxidation. Below are images of the finished piece.

Overall I was really pleased with the outcome of this piece, I was hooping that I would achieve a surface finish that was reminiscent of water in the  landscape and I think this work evokes the textures and colours observed in such things as lakes and rivers, coastal landscapes and rock pools. This piece will be going to the Visions of Landscape Exhibition in April 2023.