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Raewyn makes porcelain collections based on journeys she takes along the River Thames and the North Kent coast. Although her work is contemporary, she likes to evoke memories of something lost or forgotten and often works with found objects from the foreshore. She’s not looking for valuable finds, just interesting fragments from previous Londoners’ lives.
Through research at the London Metropolitan Archive Raewyn can often connect her finds from the river to specific dates and make ceramic transfers of the maps and panoramas she photographs from the collection.
"I am not a production potter; my pieces are unique whether they are made on the wheel or slip-cast from a mould. Droplets of porcelain around the rims of my vessels convey the story of the river and most importantly leave a visual reference of the way they’re made. As a maker, this is something I naturally look for when I pick up a ceramic shard on the foreshore. It is a piece of archaeology that I analyse for clues about how it was made and who might have made it. There is nothing more exciting than seeing centuries-old fingerprints in clay!
Porcelain is my blank canvas for the finds I press into it and the images I fire onto it. I have spent a decade developing glazes to work with the narrative of the river and tolerate the multiple rings. My trademark crawling glaze not only alludes to muddy tidal landscapes, but it also breaks the images in the final ring, reminiscent of the fragments that I collect."