Earth & Fire by Kylie Johnson and Tiffany Johnson

Earth & Fire, by Kylie Johnson and Tiffany Johnson, celebrates the work of local Australian ceramic artists. We look at the work of Kate Bowman and Amy Leeworthy from the beautiful new book.

Words: Kylie Johnson & Tiffany Johnson

Photography: Kate Bowman, Janis House, Nick Delaney, Amy Leeworthy & Bobby Clark

Kate Bowman in her studio. Photo: Nick Delaney

Kate Bowman's test tiles for various inlays, glazes and slips. Photo: Kate Bowman

The stages of inlaying lighter clay into darker clay. Photo: Janis House

Kate Bowman's test tiles for various inlays, glazes and slips. Photo: Kate Bowman

The stages of inlaying lighter clay into darker clay. Photo: Janis House

Kate Bowman

CLAY BODIES: mid-fire warm, chocolate and dark stoneware, and a recycled mix of all three

SURFACE FINISHES: various glazes, oxides and slips

KILN TYPE: electric

FIRING TEMPERATURE/CONE: 1255°C/2291°F, cone 7

Kate Bowman’s mother was a potter and Kate first ‘tasted’ clay at the age of eleven, when she tagged along to one of her weekly workshops. ‘Her teacher was an elderly Italian man who’d set up a studio at the back of his house. He’d just finished pulling bricks out of his old kiln. I remember thinking “You’d be mad to go to all this effort – it takes so long to cook!”’

Years later, Kate was working long hours as an advertising copywriter in Melbourne and felt completely burned out and in need of a change. Her husband, Steve, knowing her love of collecting ceramics, suggested doing a class. They lived close to Northcote Pottery, so in 2017 she signed up and took every workshop and course available. She also studied at the School of Clay and Art in Brunswick
in 2019. Totally sold on the change to pottery, but balancing the need for income, she scaled down her copywriting work and built up her ceramic practice.

Part of developing her practice was understanding the type of pieces she wanted to make and how they would reflect her design style. Drawn to geometric shapes with a bold mid-century look, Kate pursued a process of inlaying clays to achieve this look. She soon found out this was not the easiest of methods. As one of her first large vases was fired, the shrinkage of one of the clays was greater than the other and pieces fell out of the inlay. She persevered and has since made some very successful pieces this way.

She has also found that darker textual clays and contrasting slips have produced a similar look with her designs. While sometimes the slip is added in painted or drip methods for more abstract work, Kate also uses resist methods with paper and wax to get bolder stylised shapes on her pieces.

The clay body Kate most prefers working with is dark stoneware. She uses a contrasting white matt clay slip as decoration, or a tonal dark stain to work in with the colour of the clay. With functional work, Kate produces a series so that a set of plates can be purchased together – each one is individual, yet they all come from the same batch. Seeing collections come together is very rewarding and something that Kate has become noted for. She is often approached to create a special series for a specific business. Between commissions, online sales and supplying stockists, Kate is working at capacity. She wants to pull back a bit so she can spend more time refining the work and testing new ideas.

As well as defining her pottery look, Kate focuses on functional ware – this forms the basis of her range. Vases, bowls, cups and plates that are sold individually or as sets are part of her regular output. Her studio is on the Mornington Peninsula, where she and Steve now live. They have created a multi-use space called Stoker Studio that houses her studio and is also available for hire as a gallery space, or for markets, workshops and events.

Kate splits her time between her own making, running the business, and teaching ceramics at Stoker Studio. Inspired by her own career change and love of clay, she wants to teach others and pass on her knowledge. Her biggest challenge now is finding time to dedicate to each area of the business and her own creative work in the studio.

A collection of Amy Leeworthy’s finished works. Photo: Amy Leeworthy

Details in Amy Leeworthy’s studio. Photo: Amy Leeworthy

Amy Leeworthy wheel throwing a vase in her studio located on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Photo: Bobby Clark

Amy Leeworthy learned some essential techniques and discovered at that young age that the process of sculpting forms was quite intuitive. Photo: Bobby Clark

A finished vessel by Amy Leeworthy. Photo: Amy Leeworthy

Amy Leeworthy

CLAY BODIES: stoneware

SURFACE FINISHES: underglaze colours; matt stoneware glaze

KILN TYPE: electric

FIRING TEMPERATURE/CONE: 1280°C/2336°F, cone 9

Amy Leeworthy first made ceramics when she was very young, attending a ceramics class in a local community centre when she was eight or nine years old. She recalls that she was the only person there under the age of sixty. Her teacher introduced her to a range of clay bodies and built her confidence to make large pieces, a feat well beyond her years.

She learned some essential techniques and discovered at that young age that the process of sculpting forms was quite intuitive. She brought her works home and filled her family home with them – dragons, a life-sized head, a bust of a man, bird baths and garden statues.

Amy grew up in Red Hill, Victoria. Early European settlers named the township, which was established on Boon Wurrung Country, for its red clay. She recalls that clay was everpresent when she was growing up – caked onto the soles of her gumboots and slippery on the banks of the dams she swam in. ‘I remember making rudimentary vases with my sister – simply balls with flowers stuck in them that would dry and crack in the sun.’

She found out many years later that her late grandmother had been a hobby potter, which gave Amy pause for reflection on her own ceramic pursuits. She can feel the energy in the pots her grandmother made and treasures those pieces she now has in her home.

Many years passed between the community centre lessons and getting into full-time ceramic practice. During that time her interests were still creative, but had shifted to painting, drawing, sculpture, animation and photography. Amy returned to ceramics in 2015 after taking a course at Northcote Pottery in Melbourne, where, after feeling wobbly at first, it all started coming back to her and something clicked. She hasn’t looked back since.

During this period of relearning, Amy watched many online videos and went through a lot of trial and error. She also became a mother, and spent any spare moments while her toddlers slept attempting to master the wheel. Bit by bit, she gained confidence in her skills.

Amy lives on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, and her studio is in a bungalow behind the house. It is a peaceful place with gum trees and a family of kookaburras keeping watch. She appreciates when her artist friends drop by, as she, like many potters, can find studio life quite isolating. She admits to working quite haphazardly without much structure to her days and weeks, but tries to reserve the mornings for wedging and throwing and the afternoons for trimming and glazing.

Her work schedule is a mix of commissions and pieces for galleries and new work. She enjoys working from home, but with school days for children now making the working hours shorter, she uses night-time hours to load and unload the kiln and even brings some work inside when the kids are asleep.

Amy works with groggy stoneware clays and in a warmer spectrum of colours. She enjoys the texture of the clays, especially any clay that looks like the earth. Her bold forms are left without a shiny glaze as she likes to let the natural texture of the clay come through. She uses matt underglazes for colour, and terra sigillata that she leaves raw or paints over to create a painterly look while still showing the texture. Inspired by textiles and weaving, particularly from artists of the Bauhaus movement, Amy decorates her vessels with bold geometric patterns.

Gaining inspiration from the clay itself, Amy prefers being led by it, intuitively following its mysterious ways. She is interested in the long history of the craft of vessel making and says that ‘consciously or not’ ancient shapes and forms appear in her work. This connection to the history of making spurs her on. She is honoured that people choose to collect her work and loves that a vase encourages people to bring nature into their homes: from spinning earth to filling a handmade vessel with earth again.

THIS IS AN EDITED EXTRACT FROM EARTH & FIRE BY KYLIE JOHNSON AND TIFFANY JOHNSON, PUBLISHED BY THAMES & HUDSON, RRP $69.99. AVAILABLE WHERE ALL GOOD BOOKS ARE SOLD AND ONLINE.