Jason Braham

I have been making pots since 1972, for thirty-five years alongside a career in teaching.  The present studio in Radnorshire was established five years ago.

My current work is all once fired (i.e. without a preliminary bisque firing) to stoneware temperature and glazed by the reaction of salt vapour with the silica in the clay body and the slips with which the leather-hard pots are decorated.  The method was invented in the Rhineland in the middle ages and copied in English potteries, notably at Fulham, from the seventeenth century.  Those early salt-glazed pots and the traditional country pottery (usually low temperature slipware) of Europe are the inspiration for my work.

What I ask of my pots is quite simple: I like pots that look as if they’ve always been here, but which retain the freshness of the moment they were thrown.  I like pots that are generous, which invite touch and are complemented by good food and drink.  I like essentially simple slips and glazes and I favour cut, wiped or trailed decoration applied at an early stage in the making process.  Once firing over twenty-four hours suits the spirit in which the pots are made.