A Ceramicist’s Garden
Photographs by Eva Nemeth
Joanna Oliver is a ceramicist based in rural Oxfordshire who makes beautiful, simple and utilitarian objects, including vases. ‘I enjoy making practical objects that have a simple elegance,’ says Joanna. ‘I love the unexpectedness of what I do. You never quite know how the clay is going to behave, or how the glaze is going to turn out. You have to keep an open mind.’ Each work is therefore unique, with its own character and markings. ‘There’s real alchemy involved with glazing, and glaze recipes are generously shared between potters. Many that I use are oriental and have been used for hundreds of years.’ Each vase takes up to six weeks to make, first hand-thrown and shaped on the wheel, and then fired for the first time in the kiln. Then they are glazed and re-fired at temperatures of up to 1250C, making them incredibly durable and long-lasting. ‘It’s a very physical process,’ says Joanna. ‘You’ve got to be in control otherwise the clay fights back, it does what it wants to do. But it never ceases to amazing me the magic of being able to create something beautiful from a ball of mud.’
Having worked for many years as an art director in an advertising agency, Joanna started doing evening classes in pottery with Nicola Tassie at Standpoint Studios in Hoxton. When she moved out of London to her grandparents’ former house 15 years ago, she decided to take up pottery full time, and set up her own studio. The little wooden studio sits right in the middle of her magical garden. On one side of the studio French doors look out onto a wild pond, while on the other there is a small gravelled courtyard with a table and chairs and pots of flowers. It is wild and romantic with generous borders full of spring bulbs and self-seeded flowers and an orchard planted by her grandmother in the 1950s. ‘Gardening is a great antidote to pottery, but I don’t have enough time to do the garden justice. It really gardens itself. Things that like it here have taken over.’
After buying one of her vases and finding it so lovely to use, I commissioned her to make some more vases in two designs. The 20cm tall chimney vase has a stippled surface, making it very tactile, and its slightly flared neck means that the flowers sit easily and beautifully in the vase. Somehow you can just put the flowers in and they instantly look good. The smaller bottle vases are shorter and pleasingly rounded in shape, ideal for a posy of absolutely anything from the garden. The vases are available in my online shop.
