Ingot is a range of utilitarian stoneware pottery and decorative pieces - wheel-thrown and hand-built simple forms, made to be durable and affordable but with plenty of character and individuality. The pieces are made in a rustic style from basic clay bodies and materials, embracing impurities in the clays and irregular surfaces, and incorporating wild clays and materials I’ve collected myself - wood ash glazes feature prominently.

Through Ingot I hope to produce objects that people will engage with and cherish as they own and use them, and to convey my founding ideas through interaction with these objects. Familiar objects like plates, bowls and cups can fulfil their function, but interaction through use can be a more rewarding experience than just that. The repeated use of an object or tool develops a special type of knowledge of that form and its material. Hand-made objects have idiosyncrasies and can possess individual characters.

A few years ago I visited Minnesota, which largely through the influence of the potter Warren MacKenzie, has a strong history of practicing a modern interpretation of Japanese Mingei or “folk art” craft pottery, which itself was an interpretation of ancient Korean rustic pottery. It found popularity in the 20th century largely through the work and teachings of Shoji Hamada in Japan and of course Bernard Leach in Britain, of whom Mackenzie was a student. Having always loved this type of historic pottery and having seen many examples in museum collections in the UK, US and Korea, I was inspired to begin investigations into making my own work following in this tradition, using local, native gathered materials to pursue a Scottish expression of these ideas.

This work intends to celebrate the rituals of cooking and eating, and to produce objects that have a long life and are made with environmental concerns in mind, doing as much as possible to incorporate low-impact practices and materials, recycling as much as I can, and only using recycled and recyclable/compostable packaging.

Jonathan Wade