I grew up in a small village in North West Essex in the East of England. It was the 1970s and our tiny village school was very keen on creative pursuits. I especially remember spending hours painting, knitting, doing creative writing and working with clay. We had a kiln in one of the classrooms and often made “objects” in a heavy terra-cotta clay, its only enhancement a slick of transparent glaze. I don’t think any pieces have survived from that first love affair with pottery; and unfortunately, I wasn’t destined to get my hands messy in clay for many years to come.
At home, my sister and I were always drawing and painting, sewing and knitting, making dolls houses from cardboard boxes, and dolls to live in the houses out of paper-mâché and pipe cleaners dressed in fabric scraps. We loved playing and building cities with Legos, or making animals with plasticine. I also loved writing stories and would fill book after book with my imagination.
We had two cats, a dog and a pony, and spent our days riding around the village, taking the opportunity for a canter on any stretch of grass we could find.
This idyl was somewhat shattered when I went, aged 11, to the rather austere all-girls secondary school in the nearby town. This school prided itself on its excellent academic record, and art very much took a back seat. I was totally bewildered by the whole experience, going from one cosy classroom and one teacher to a full timetable with a variety of classrooms and teachers. A train ride to and from the town left little time for cavorting about on my pony, too.
After school, I spent a few years studying and then working as a florist, culminating in a job in London. When city life became too hectic and too expensive, I went for a complete change of scenery and moved to Cornwall in the southwest of England to work with horses, as had always been my childhood passion.
That sojourn resulted in my brief first marriage to a dairy farmer, having my two eldest sons, and becoming adept at milking 200 cows a day and caring for the calves. When that all came to an end, I returned to the village where I had grown up, taking my boys and dog with me.
Once back in my childhood village and living in my grandma’s old house, my boys had the creative childhood I had previously enjoyed. Our house was always overflowing with paints and paper, glitter and collage.
So far, clay had not made an appearance in my life since primary school, but I was craving a creative pursuit for myself, so I enrolled in some evening classes at a local town. By this point, I had met Matt, who has been my husband now for 21 years, and I had also just found out I was expecting our first child together. The classes were very relaxed, and we used the same red heavy terra-cotta clay I had used at school.
This time, though, there were a few colours in the form of slips and glazes to use for decoration. There were also two wheels, which we could take in turns to use to try to throw a vessel. My attempts at this over the weeks became more and more hilarious, as the bigger my bump got, the farther from the wheel I got — which is not ideal. Eventually, the woman who ran the class suggested that my friend Liz and I take some clay to a table in the corner and try hand building. I was hooked.
But again, my life with clay was to have another hiatus as having three small boys does not easily enable one to devote hours on the potter’s wheel, which requires your sole attention and does not appreciate small hands “helping.” Hand building may have been slightly more practical but where to fire the finished articles posed a problem, as most kilns require an extra special type of electrical wiring which most domestic homes do not have.
A few years down the line I gave birth to our daughter. This also coincided with an opportunity to go and study illustration at our local university. I was 37 and hadn’t been to university so far in my life. I had recently completed a textiles diploma and was regularly selling bags and aprons and things I had sewn at local markets and craft fairs.
I was a mature student and studied for my degree part time, so it took me six years to finish. In the third year, we had a talk from an illustrator called Laura Carlin, whose work I very much admired. Following her talk and slideshow in the lecture theatre, she came back to our studio and looked at our work. I got talking to her about what she was working on and she shared that she had just begun adding some of her illustrations to ceramic tiles and showed me an animal she had made in clay. She also excitedly told me about all the underglazes and pencils and glazes you could buy to decorate your work, a selection far wider than the three or four lumpy slips and glazes I had come across so far. I knew there and then in an instant that I was going to rekindle my relationship with clay; and that illustration, storytelling and clay were my future.
I went home and announced my newfound “career” to my husband, who probably thought I had lost my marbles (and not for the first time). By the weekend, I had found a potter who offered classes based in Cambridge. She happened to be having an open studio that weekend, so we went along. I ended up doing several courses in Cambridge, which resulted in me working as a studio assistant a couple of days a week.
At home, I had bought some clay and was making pinch pots every evening, and misshapen bowls and plates which I fired at the studio in Cambridge. I taught myself how to screen print on clay, which then enabled me to transfer my illustrations onto the clay and add them to my bowls and plates and mugs.
Eventually, I invested in a small kiln which only fired up to earthenware temperatures but plugged into a regular electric socket. I was able to take the plunge and begin doing some fairs and markets and found my work was very well received.
After a year or so, it became evident that a bigger kiln was needed. I had begun teaching an after-school club at my children’s school, as well as classes in my studio for children on a Saturday morning, and was having to fire all their work, too. I was also keen to work in stoneware and this required a kiln that fired to a higher temperature. To enable me to have the kiln of my dreams we would have to have three-phase electricity fitted to our house’s domestic supply, which was rumoured to cost thousands of pounds. I was nervous to even get a quote as it was a make or break for the business.
I finally got an electrician round to quote and was astounded when he informed me that our house was already equipped with three-phase electricity and all it needed was to be reconnected, which cost me the princely sum of 34 pounds. Our 120-litre Nabertherm kiln was duly installed, and this enabled my production to increase. I was by now selling through lots of galleries and markets as well as teaching classes to children and adults.
I am now best known for making my ceramic houses, which may have you wondering why they haven’t yet been mentioned. Well, they have a story of their own you see.
Every afternoon I used to have to entice my daughter out to walk the dog with me, which she was not always that enthusiastic to do. There is a beautiful street near us called Castle Street which has brightly coloured Tudor timber-framed houses, many with beams on the outside. We used to walk the dog down that street and I would tell her stories about the people who lived in those houses. She and I began making little houses in clay together and I found it so inspiring I began making some on my own, adding them to my Instagram grid and telling stories on there about the people who lived in the houses I had made.
Around the same time as my house building began, my husband booked me into a raku firing class, another way of firing which I had been interested in trying. In an electric kiln, the temperature is increased slowly in ramps over many hours. Firings can take between 24 and 48 hours to heat up and cool down. With raku firing, the process is much faster and more intense. A special clay is used to make the pieces, which can withstand the thermal shock of being taken up and then down rapidly in temperature, all done within an hour.
The other difference between raku firing and other firings is that the kiln door is opened at around 1,000 degrees and the pieces removed. The ceramics are then placed in small bins with tight-fitting lids which cause reduction and crackle, or metallic flashes, on the glazes. We had soon bought a raku kiln and all of my houses were fired in this way. Currently, I use a combination of raku and electric firings for my houses which enables me to use different clays and glazes. I am always developing new ideas and shapes of houses.
My houses often have words on them, such as “A Good Place to Listen to” and “The Bureau of Self Belief.” I also make yarn and plant-themed shops, which are popular.
The Making Process
I first roll out the clay and then smooth it with a rubber kidney. The sections that make up each house are then cut out of the clay using templates which I made when I had access to a laser cutter at university. I have also made other templates from cardboard.
Then my maker’s mark is added to the underside of the base and some holes are cut out to allow moisture to escape when the house is in the bisque firing. The house is built like a little flat-pack furniture kit. The trickiest part is the final roof panel at the back, which is difficult to add as there is no way to support the house from the inside so it all risks caving in.
Iusually make about 15 in one day. They are then left on a shelf to dry for a week before going into the electric kiln for 24 hours to be bisque fired.
Then they are glazed and either raku fired or fired in the electric kiln, depending on which clay I have used and the finish I am going for.
Nowadays, I promote my work through my Instagram account and I hold a sale every six weeks on my website amandabanham.com. My husband works with me doing all the firing, website updates, post and packaging, so it is a true family business.
My Hopes and Fears
I have built up a loyal international following of collectors over the years and would absolutely love to bring my work to take part in a fair in the USA or Australia to meet some of the people I have so far only “met” online.
My only fears really are not selling enough ceramics to pay the bills. It is a constant struggle on Instagram to get enough content photographed or videoed to post, in addition to making the work I am actually making, so there is a consistent worry as to whether I will have enough engagement on there to promote my sales. I also have a newsletter but finding the time to write is another struggle. I am constantly time-poor!
My Pets
I have always had dogs in my life. I have three at the moment. Daisy is an 11-year-old whippet lurcher who we rescued. Jane is actually my daughter’s dog. She is a 6-year-old West Highland terrier. My other dog is someone I waited 40 years to get, as I have wanted one since I was 10, but sensibly waited until I was 50. He is an English setter called Fletcher, now 2. They are with me in the studio all day. My routine is to take them on a long walk first thing in the morning; then they doze while I work; and then we have a shorter walk in the afternoon.
