Jennifer Morris 'Resilience' Raku vessel, 5

Dimensions: Ø 17cm x H 16.5cm 

Materials: Stoneware 

Method: Raku fired to 1000 degrees in a gas kiln. Once the interior glaze has melted, it is removed from the kiln when red hot and immersed in a container with organic combustable materials. The carbon created from this process is absorbed to create a crackled glazed interior and an intricate smoke fired exterior 

Care: Water-tight, wipe dry after use 

This finely hand-thrown vessel exhibits gentle tonal shifts from its raku smoke firing, alongside a masterfully weighted and balanced form. The quiet lustre and gestural mark-making of its textured, burnished exterior is contrasted to the intricate web of white crackled glaze amalgamated on the interior, drawing the eye. The base displays the raw, rough clay body of its material beginnings, finished with a neat maker's mark.

Jennifer Morris’ 2022 collection for Maud & Mabel entitled Resilience responds to the artist’s sustained meditation on the importance of strength and durability to navigate daily life. Exploring her material through this concept of resilience, Morris utilises both raku firing, in which clays have to withstand rapid changes in extreme temperature, alongside reduction firing, in which clay has to endure the expansion and contraction of snowflake glazes: two material processes which put the clay under significant stress. Her preference for these processes, which produce intricate surface crackling and strong textural depth, lies in Morris’ relishing of chance-based interactions that are so intrinsic to the ceramic practice - ‘You can never make the same exact piece twice and therein lies the magic.’

About the artist:

Jennifer Morris is a ceramic artist based close to the Maud & Mabel Gallery in Hampstead, London. A pre-foundation course in 2008 introduced her to working with clay. Morris hand-builds objects that can be easily inserted into daily life and provide both joy and function. Using an understated and limited colour palette, which draws attention to the silhouettes of her creations, Morris experiments with different stoneware and earthenware clays. Her creative process is intuitive; visualising an image in her mind and then creating it in three-dimensional form - ‘I sketch in clay, making new ideas come to life’. For Morris, this allows her to find inspiration during the process, letting her works organically develop, retaining energy and movement in her pieces.