A TERRACED house in a quiet street on Oxford’s Osney Island is the last place you’d expect to find a thriving pottery – but one art lover has spent the past year turning her home into a ceramics workshop.
Pottery enthusiast Elizabeth Newbery had been perfecting her clay working skills before the first lockdown hit. Then in a bid to stay busy when everything closed, she took the plunge, installed a kiln and turned her kitchen into a workshop. Even her garden table serves as a work bench – when weather allows.
A former teacher, she had been an enthusiastic potter as a student at Bath Academy of Art in the 1960s and had returned to ceramics as a hobby with weekly classes at the City of Oxford College.
Read more: Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry support Oxford Playhouse with lockdown show
She said: “For the last two or three years, I’ve also been re-igniting my interest in ceramics at excellent weekly classes at the City of Oxford College with good facilities and top notch tutors. So, I suppose the desire to make pots seriously again had been bubbling away for some time.
Elizabeth Newbery Ceramics. Picture by Ed Nix
“Covid provided me with a great opportunity. Within a few weeks I had taken delivery of a kiln and made the covered side passage of my small house into a modest pottery.
“I don’t ‘throw’ pots on a wheel, preferring to hand-build pieces meaning I need less equipment. Space is still very tight so I make large dishes on the garden table when the weather is good and small pieces on the kitchen table when it isn’t.”
She goes on: “Decorating surfaces is my big thing. I’m not really interested in making pots for use – other potters do that much better than I ever could. Nor am I particularly attracted to revealing in the endless possibilities of clay for its own sake. I like making dishes and using the surface to tell a story. All my work is slipware – low-fired earthenware decorated with liquid clay using traditional techniques. Happiness for me is a brush full of slip.”
She is inspired by everything from her home city and allotment, to the wide open spaces of Australia.
Elizabeth Newbery Ceramics - Osney Island, Oxford 23/01/2021 Picture by Ed Nix
She says: “They reflect my particular interests such as travels to Australia, the astonishing landscape and especially the artwork of the first Australians. Others reveal my interest in the universality of mark-making across time, faith and all continents gathered while working in museums, or of the rich historical interiors of the fabulous places I have had the privilege to work in. Still more tell of my life in Oxford digging on my allotment or making new discoveries in the city’s world class museums and galleries.
Elizabeth Newbery Ceramics - Osney Island, Oxford 23/01/2021 Picture by Ed Nix
“Just before the Ashmolean closed, I wandered into the galleries displaying Islamic ceramics and was particularly attracted by some small shards of highly patterned broken pots and embellished with metallic oxides such as gold and silver. I stood there imagining what it must have been like to be an archaeologist gradually uncovering those fragments glittering in the hot sun.
Read more: County gallery finds perfect antidote to lockdown - and a way to liven up our walks
"Remembering that, I’ve made small elaborate pinchpots on my kitchen table.
“It’s not exactly ‘thank you Covid’ but at least I’m managing to make it work for me.”
l See elizabethnewberyceramics.com or Instagram at @elizabethmnewbery
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here