Plates
People tell me “I never put my coral plates away. They go from dishwasher to table and back, in constant use.“
The plates are tough workhorses taking the abuses of daily use from cutlery, microwaves and dishwashers in their stride. Food looks surprisingly good on them and they are distinctive, with no two being quite the same. Rather than a set, the plates form a family. There is no doubt that each is individually handcrafted, yet they belong together. And they stack easily.
The patterns are based on corals I saw snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and at Raja Ampat. I burn the pattern with a soldering iron into foam, and transfer it to rolled clay. The design shows as ridges and depressions in the clay surface. These depressions are filled with layer upon layer of variously coloured liquid clays. When the plate top is flat, I scrape it back carefully to reveal the pattern’s white ridges. Then the edge is torn to size, and the plate dries in a plaster form. It is fired in the kiln to 1200°C, with a clear glaze on top.