Set against the landscape of its home in Somerset, Muchelney is the home of a working pottery established in 1965 by John Leach and his wife Lizzie. John continued the family tradition that his grandfather Bernard Leach, widely considered the most important and influential artist-potter of the 20th century started. Muchelney Pottery ceramics can be described as having “tactile forms robustly made with strong shapes and fire-licked decoration.” I resonated with the values they held in craftsmanship and producing work with functionality.
A priority for me in creating these assets was to really connect the pottery’s ethos of craftsmanship and materiality. Just as Muchelney’s ceramics reflected their craft, I wanted the assets I produced for them to reflect this shared ethos. Taking direct reference from the architecture of the pottery itself, I went about producing physical carvings from chalk that I could photograph and integrate into the image. Placed importance was to create a scene that reflected the pottery’s building layout and geography, but to also act as an abstract representation. I wanted the processes in which I created the artwork to reflect the nature of the sculptural forms of their products
A speculative project for Muchelney, I would’ve pitched the idea of producing designed, illustrated, then screen-printed assets that could be utilised in a promotional capacity through web, social or print formats to frame their product range as a working pottery in the best light.
