Lifelong learning for playful potters

The key word is immersion. Slowness. Carrying on and on and on, doing the same thing. And pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

No wonder the two potters, each at opposite ends of the island, have so much in common – Poul Erik Eliasen in Strandby near Tranekær and Søren Baun Jeppesen in Hennetved near Lindelse enjoy getting together to geek out and discuss experiments and results.

Academy-trained potter

Søren Baun Jeppesen took a slightly different path. He trained as a potter at the Aarhus Academy of Fine Arts, where he also built the kiln he still uses some forty years on.

“I’ve stuck with the same type of clay – a French stoneware clay – the classic forms such as bowls and jars, and the same simple glazes ever since then. But if you look at my ceramics from forty years ago and compare them to those of today, there’s a huge difference. For all these years, I have been working to better understand the chemical process that takes place during wood-firing, and I have constantly experimented and played around, but even now I cannot say that I have mastered the process. I can carry on and on and still keep learning new things,” notes Søren Baun Jeppesen.

Challenging oneself

Although both potters constantly challenge themselves, there is a significant difference between them. Whilst Søren Baun Jeppesen is most interested in what happens during the firing process and is happy to sit for eighteen hours without a break on a rather uncomfortable dining chair in front of the wood-fired kiln, tending the fire and taking notes on the rise in temperature, Poul Erik Eliasen has his focus elsewhere: He thinks about the form – it fascinates him, although he also works very consistently with the celadon glaze, which originated in 15th-century China and which, during firing, takes on a transparent, light jade colour. Never quite uniform in colour, of course.

The white clay

Poul Erik Eliasen uses exclusively white porcelain clay, which becomes almost transparent when fired.

The porcelain clay can be thrown to a particularly thin thickness, lending the bowl or jug a delicate elegance. And if he chooses to add small feet to a large, elegant form, he does so without regard for functionality. He prefers an aesthetically unique piece to a clunky utility bowl. However, the disadvantage of porcelain clay is that the turned piece does not merely shrink by the usual 10–12 per cent during firing, as other clays do, but actually emerges from the kiln a fifth smaller than when it was placed inside.

Furthermore, as the clay begins to warp in the gas kiln when the temperature reaches 1,320 degrees, there is a high risk of opening the kiln to find broken bowls and jars.

Ruggedness and brown

Søren Baun Jeppesen’s works are more rugged. “For many years, my bowls and jars were out of fashion because they were brown and rustic, with patterns rooted in the Neolithic era – patterns that I create, for example, using mussel shells”. Now the trend has reversed, and ceramics without garish colours – featuring patterns that help to emphasise simplicity and timelessness – have once again found their way into home décor.

He is not just the ‘little chemist’, although he does explain reduction firing and sodium vapour, and how to use nature’s own materials – finding ochre in a stream or clay on the beaches of Langeland – clay that is ground into a thin slurry and used as glaze. For in reality, he doesn’t have a vast array of glazes in his workshop at all, and perhaps he also feels that it is mainly the domain of young, newly qualified potters to experiment with colours.

“For me, glazes are one big experiment. You can crush a piece of granite and use it as a glaze. For example, I also use the ash from my wood-burning stove, which contains sodium and potassium compounds,” he says.