Inigo & The New Craftsmen: how Dylan Bowen finds wild expression in the ancient art of slipware pottery

This story is the third in our collaborative series with The New Craftsmen, a London-based initiative and showroom focused on British designer-makers engaging with traditional techniques. 

“For me, pottery is a family thing,” says ceramic artist Dylan Bowen. He’s not exaggerating: his wife, Jane Bowen, and his father, Clive Bowen, are also potters. And then, on his mother’s side, his grandfather and great grandfather were potters too. “It was always around as I was growing up,” he says, “it was just there.” Pottery, then, might have seemed an obvious career path for Dylan – but he wasn’t always determined to follow suit. In fact, though he worked with his father for a couple of years as a teenager, he abandoned pottery altogether after moving from North Devon to London to study at the Camberwell College of Art. It wasn’t until eight or nine years later, he says, that he “crept back” to ceramics. “In hindsight, I needed to get away from it to figure out what my direction was going to be.” But of course, once he found it, something clicked. Today, Dylan creates a dazzling range of ceramic works, ranging from functional plates and chargers to intriguing shapes and forms, all of which are characterised by their expressionistic approach to traditional slipware techniques. Below, he talks Inigo through his inspirations and process. 

“If you’ve got two types of coloured clay, you can create slipware.”

“The work I do comes from the English slipware tradition, which stretches back to maybe the 12th century or even before –  it’s one of the most ancient ways of making ceramics. Slip is basically liquid clay. If you’ve got two types of coloured clay, you can create slipware. Say you have a base clay, for example, a red clay, then, to decorate, you use a liquid white clay – you just whack that on the top. The materials are very simple. My father works in North Devon, and there was a slipware tradition there because there was good red clay and white clay in the ground. If you wanted green clay, you’d put a bit of copper in with the white. It was rustic wares. It was cheaply made. Every home would would use slipware – it was low fired. So it’s got this history in country pottery. But at the same time, in Stoke-on-Trent there were people like [17th/18th century potters] the Tofts. They made really decorative chargers decorated with quite intricate and commemorative designs. Anyway, slipware fell out of favor when more high-fired wares came. It came to be seen as quite unsophisticated, bright and rustic.

“At the turn of this century, slipware was revived by the studio potters Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew. They saw the joy of slipware. They felt that the direct mark making was something to be celebrated. My dad learned from Cardew and he was always drawn to mark making. He took it in this direction. 

“It’s dynamic and dramatic, keeping the physical energy in the marks.”

“My dad was working as a painter and he’d already taken his slipware marks in a quite a painterly direction. I just carried on from him. Slipware lends itself to a very physical way of working. It’s very expressive. For me, it works best when I’m working with very wet slip and splashing around everywhere. It’s quite dynamic and dramatic. That’s the area that I’m really interested in, the very quick mark making. Trying to keep the physical energy in the marks.

“When I was working with the slip, I was always thinking, how can I inject this energy into my clay work? I think that’s an ongoing investigation. I guess that’s at the heart of what I’m trying to do, bringing that injection of energy and life into the whole thing, not just having these bold marks that are kind of static. I want it all to vibrate. 

“All the action is in the making and decorating.”

“Some pieces are thrown on the wheel and some are hand built, or they’re made out of slices of clay – or elements of both. Once each piece is finished, it usually has to sit for a while until it’s not-quite leather hard, and then I can apply my slips. Then it dries and you put it in the kiln. The glazes that I put on the slip are really simple: it’s either a clear glaze or honey glaze. All the action is in the making and the decorating.

“For me, it really helps to be restricted to these simple materials and processes. I’ve often tried to introduce other elements or other colours, but I think having a simple framework works best for me. It means I’ve got a root somewhere. So if I’m going to go off, I’m still attached to quite a simple structure. I’ve often thought “I should be doing more,” but there’s enough there for me. It’s different for everybody, isn’t it? I like that it’s simple. I also like the fact that it’s got a history to it; I feel like I’m connected to something, but I can head off in my own direction.”

FURTHER READING:

Dylan Bowen at The New Craftsmen
Michael Cardew & Winchcombe Pottery, 1926-1939 by John Edgeler, Cotswolds Living Press, 2015
A Potters Book, by Bernard Leach, 1940 (2011 Faber Finds edition), Faber & Faber