Material Matters with Grant Gibson
In Material Matters, host Grant Gibson talks to a designer, maker, artist, architect, engineer, or scientist about a material or technique with which they’re intrinsically linked and discovers how it changed their lives and careers.
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Material Matters with Grant Gibson
Kate Malone on clay.
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Kate Malone is one of Britain’s most important ceramicists, with pieces in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Manchester Art Gallery and the V&A, to name just a few.
She works in many different areas, from nature-inspired gallery pieces to batch production mugs via public art and architectural commissions – as she puts it rather wonderfully, her projects range in value from £25 to £1.5 million.
In a discussion that can only be described as wide-ranging, we talk about her fascination with the natural world; how a near-deadly bout of meningitis changed her life for the better; her time as a TV judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown(clue: she was the one that didn’t burst into tears continually); and why exactly people used to mistake her for Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall.
The thread through it all is her love of clay and the joy she evidently finds in communicating with it. You can find out more about Kate here: katemaloneceramics.com or go to her galleryist’s site here: adriansassoon.com.
Hello and welcome to the second series of Material Matters with me, Grant Gibson. Over the next six episodes, we'll be talking to some of the UK's leading creatives about, amongst other things, plastic, metal, textiles, and willow. But first of all, we'll meet Kate Malone to talk clay. And please remember, if you enjoy what you hear, feel free to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also pledge on our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash material matters. We'll be helping to take the message of the importance of materials, skill, craft, and design to a whole new audience. I hope you enjoy. Today I'm in the London studio of a ceramic is like no other. Kate Malone has been at the top of her game for more than thirty years, developing an unmistakable aesthetic often inspired by nature and in the process pioneering glaze techniques. She's worked on any number of scales, from batch production pieces made in her studio to creating facades for buildings. She's also had shows at places like the Jeffrey Museum and Watson Manor, while her pieces have been collected extensively, both privately and by public organisations. But she's arguably best known for her time spent as a TV judge on the Great Pottery Throwdown. Kate, thanks very much for doing this.
SPEAKER_01Very nice uh little beginning as well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00That's my pleasure. That's my pleasure. Um I mean, what we generally do on this podcast is kind of talk about uh where and how you work to begin with. Um so can we talk about the environment we found ourselves in today? You're in East London, and this is kind of this extraordinary you there seems to be no division between your work and your your home life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think well, my daughter and my husband would probably complain about that. But essentially, really, since 1988 or nine, yes, we've lived and worked on the same piece of land or in the same building, and essentially now we're in quite a new building. My husband is a builder, so we've really worked as a team together, him providing studios and home for us to live in, and I'm making all the time. He's that sort of silent partner, but he built this timber-framed little house, which is like a ship out of French green oak, himself teaching my nephew uh carpentry at the same time, and every single bit of this house is done by Graham except for the electrics. And so the staircase, the windows, the frames.
SPEAKER_00So when you moved in here in 1890?
SPEAKER_01Well, we bought this decades ago as a furniture storage warehouse, an ugly warehouse, right in the middle of Hackney and Dalston, came up for auction, and we got planning permission on proviso that we didn't take any of the walls down. So that's why it's quite dark downstairs. So we actually built a building inside the existing building. Okay. And uh Graham is a craftsman, a great craftsman. The materials around you, there's bare concrete board, which is supposed to be insulation behind you, that looks very beautiful, and uh all the oak, um the green oak is just sort of slightly splitting and moving and twisting. You know, we're noticing it move and shift, and there's a zinc roof, and it's just this little unit, tiny, you know, right in London, two bedrooms, two tiny bathrooms. So my daughter has a room, and Graham and I have a room, but we also live in Kent. And then a tiny studio downstairs, and my team, sometimes six or eight of us, are in that little room, which is five and a half metres by five and a half metres in essence with a kiln in it, and we all work around this bench. It's just marvellous, really, that we manage to sort of symbiotically work. There's three of them working away as we chat now.
SPEAKER_00And you spill out into the kitchen downstairs.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes meetings do, but really I try and draw the line. There's a long corridor, you might have noticed it's sort of, but that's really drawing the line but in the health and safety side of things, and we have a fabulous little air cube that goes on at night that cleans the air.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And all sorts of so we're very I'm quite I'm quite strict for the benefit of my family, really. If they weren't here, I'm sure I would have spilled out into the rest of the ground floor. But packing and things go on by the dining room table. Cook I can be cooking, or Graham or my daughter can be cooking, and I'll be working in the studio. So it's a lovely fusion, actually. It really is an idylle in my eyes.
SPEAKER_00Because you also have this, you live, I mean, you also mentioned you live in Kent. Um, do you work there as well, or how do you divide your time?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's all very new, really, because in 86 we bought this land in Hackney very cheaply, very undesirable area. And over these last 30 years, we've sort of moved from a house to the land at the back and then to some land at the side. And it's really only the last year and a half that my husband said, 30 years in London, not good enough. I need a garden. And so we've sold one of the buildings to a group of potters, a co-op a family who are renting it to a group of potters. So the legacy of the land use lives on. Um, and um, so we're setting up a studio, big studio, for the first time in my life, I've got space. You know, I've been in central London, and every single square inch and every square foot has been stuffed with these great trolleys with wheels, and you I could only glaze or make. I could never really do the same actions at the same time. And so now I've got a barn the size of a small church, I've got studios. And I I literally, the other day, I was doing some clay recycling in the barn, and I started shouting because my team came running to say, What's the matter? I was like, I can't believe it, I've got so much space, I've got space, you know. So we did our time.
SPEAKER_00Do your team follow you to Kent when you're working on the city.
SPEAKER_01So this is about community, actually.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01So, in a way, I've been part of this community in Hackney on this cobbled muse. I've stopped over development, you know. The block at the end wanted to be eight stories high. And Judith Cowan and I, who's a sculptor, we stopped it being it's five stories high, and people have wanted to build all around. And this is a unique muse, which had a metal spinner, a Rolls-Royce restorer, there's a leather dealer, there was the biggest buckle supplier in Hackney that's moved. But the leather's still here, and there's a craft leather workshop here. So, this is a very rare thing that Hackney used to be stuffed with makers. And so I very much believe in community, that community being my family first, and then my team, and then my professional community, my glaze academic community, the architect, you know, it's all about communities and trying to be part of that. And so, the team, for instance, of whom there are 11, and they only work two days a week each, really. Okay, I never thought I ever wanted all of somebody who had the skills that I demand. And so they all have their own studios and it's a sort of symbiotic thing. Sometimes, whenever they haven't got any money at all, they say, Can they have full time? Other times they're really busy and they don't want to come at all. So it's a flexing, moving cloud of help, actually. And because most of them I've been working with, well, Josh is new, he's an intern, six months he's been here, right back to sort of Anna and Ricky have been around for 12 years, on and off, coming and going.
SPEAKER_00And where do you find them? Do they come to you? Do you scout them?
SPEAKER_01No, I never scout them at all. It's sometimes it's serendipity. For instance, my workshop manager Helen Evans, who's now set up in Tobago, she gave in her notice after eight years. And the same week, Mariah, who's downstairs, wrote to me from Kiln Rooms.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And said, you know, was there an availability? And although I have constant letters of inquiry, it's just about timing sometimes. So I'm very much a believer in sort of fate. So this let you know, this email came in from Mariah, said, Come in, you know, and so then she shadowed Helen for three or four months to learn the job of glaze, you know, she runs the glaze mixing. And so it's a very sort of moving, growing, fluxing thing, which sometimes is really I'm often writing the same, what days are you in? When are you going to be here? And often I go away for you know a month at a time, and I have and they all I guarantee them work. I'll never say there's no work for them. I've always felt that I'll never give them an insecure base, and so I have to guarantee them work. So, in a way, a lot of the work has evolved because they're there, so there's a lot of intricate work that I wouldn't do if they weren't there. So it's a very fascinating thing, actually. You know, last week uh Anna came and she said, Oh, I need to, you know, I want seven days' work, I want to work all through the weekend, I want to sort of earn a nice lump of money. So I had to think about what she was going to do. And so now this week, this pot's nearly finished that I wouldn't have dreamt would exist. Because I had to sort of think on my toes. And so, in a way, it's a sort of design challenge, actually, you know, to keep them busy. It's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00Is that I was gonna say, is that a pressure?
SPEAKER_01It is a pressure, yeah, but I don't mind the pressure at all, you know. I don't mind it at all. I find it very exciting, much like doing public artworks when an architect will come with their idea of something and I have to interpret and work with them as part of a team. So, yeah, it is um stressful. No, I don't think it is. Maybe slightly.
SPEAKER_00Can we talk about your locale and being in the city? Because it's always intrigued me that your work is kind of inspired generally, often, not entirely, but generally by nature, and yet you've always located, or for the longest time, located yourself slight bang in the heart of yeah, what is let's face it, quite a gritty part of London. How does that work?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's fascinating, isn't it? I mean, my dad said when I was tiny, before I could hardly walk, he'd see me in the garden, sort of sitting and looking at flowers very closely, sort of pulling them apart, I suppose. I don't know, but just look he saw me studying nature, he said he remembers that, although I don't necessarily remember it. And I think I've always loved nature. We travel a lot. So although we've been in the city for 30 years, for two months of every year, we've travelled all around the world, backpacked, you know, from the start 30 years ago we were traveling in India. So there is that where you absorb nature, and I think the city needs nature. I like to please people, I always like to please people. So, in a way, I'm sort of and in New York my work's quite successful, and I think it's that's even more of a concept of the world.
SPEAKER_00Which is quite interesting, because you wouldn't necessarily expect that, would you?
SPEAKER_01You wouldn't, but it's bringing nature to their homes, yeah. I think the spirit of nature or the spirit of the earth, which is my objective, is there. Um, and but I have lived away, so when our daughter Scarlett, who's now 22, yeah, was four, my husband said Hackney Air is not good enough. And so we did actually keep the London building and go and buy a house in the south of France. And Scarlett went to school in the local village, school in the medieval Provenceal village, and I had a studio in a raw cave there. And in fact, funnily enough, when I got there, all the fancier things that I make here didn't seem relevant at all, and I got made much more simple pieces.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's interesting because I was going to ask whether the the move to Kent, do you expect that to change your work? Often when people change the size of their studios, it can affect the what they what they can do.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I mean, up till now, although I'm known often for making big pots that weigh about a third of a ton, I could only ever make one at a time or two maximum. Otherwise, we were just literally shuffling and squeezing around these delicate pots. But now I'm going to be able to make four in a row if I want to, or you know, just actually just store and move. So I think that will help. I think that'll change things. But we've also got a beautiful garden. We've got two acres of garden, and it's been gardened by four generations of women by this funny pie and sausage making family called the Baxters. They've had it and they the garden's beautiful. So I've got a I can feel kind of really English flowers or something coming through. But at the same time, I don't know. Um, because the thing is, I try and respond to the moment and not really think too much ahead. I'm quite naive like that, really. Hence taking on these giant jobs that nobody really would have taken on had they realised what was involved.
SPEAKER_00Can we talk? Because as I was researching this and I was reading various books on you and pieces that what I've written in the past and others, um, it kind of struck me that that your work is quite hard to categorize. Kate. I mean, if you look at English ceramics, there's a kind of Leechian school of British pottery, the classic brown pot, and then you have people like Alice in Britton, Carol McNichol, who kind of chafed against that, if you like. Um Edmund Duval, who we had in our first series of this particular podcast, you know, was Leichin, and then very vocally and and quite dramatically decided to step away from that. Um you seem to sit in your own world. Do you think that's that's a fair comment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's very interesting because I love brown pots. I just bought a I just bought a McCassin on the internet, a little pot, and I collect Brampton pots, and I adore, I sort of really empathize with the pure earthy nature of the potter. I think potters always provide a service, again, to community, in that they made flower pots and bread pans and cups and bowls and things like that. Nowadays the modern potter doesn't, they're not needed to provide that service, and so the public art and things that I do sort of fulfill that as a potter. But um really I just think I've I've always just I always thought when I left the Royal College in 1986, I thought I'll do what I want to do and what's me, and if it doesn't work, then I'll probably have to change and sort of make. I always thought everybody needs a cereal bowl, a nice bowl. You know, I've never had to do that. But um, I don't know. I supp I don't, I don't, I think if you look at the history of ceramics worldwide, I think I fit in a timeline quite strongly there. I mean, the pumpkins and the gourds and the artichokes and things like that, you could actually put them in a context and say that they were Chinese 17th century, couldn't you? I mean you could say you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you could be, you know, the experts wouldn't be fooled, but yeah, there is that. And I have this thing that people and potters throughout time respond to nature and to clay in the same way. So often you can see a Chinese pumpkin that's totally gorgeous from the 17th, 18th century and put mine next to it, and there's this really strong parallel. And then things like the Seve, of course, recently, Adrian Sassoon's love of Seve, and all the people that I meet in his circle have influenced me in that way. And so I suppose I'd like to think I might fit in a wor a world timeline rather than a British one. But I think my shapes are all English. I think the width, if you look at a Staffordshire pot, like a Minton or a Dalton pot, a jug, the width, they're almost as if you measure them, they're almost as wide as they are tall, they're very stable, they're strong, they actually have posture, don't they? They have this sort of British bulldog posture, do they? And I think definitely from the start, my work had that British form and stability and strength, not by intention, but simply by it happening.
SPEAKER_00Can we talk about your relationship with clay? I mean, this is what the podcast is all about. And and when did clay as a material kind of strike you?
SPEAKER_01Well, I do remember using sort of an air clay when I was about four and making a cupcake and being struck by the malleability of the material. And then I think it was secondary school. I was at this fantastic, rather rough, very progressive secondary comprehensive school outside Bristol.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_011,400 kids. It was it was rough. They went on strike and they attacked the headmaster in the night. I mean, it's a really raw area.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I loved it there. I was chairman of debates and chairman of social affairs and deputy head girl. You know, I really loved being there. But they had this amazing art department, this whole block. And in fact, the head of art who's now in his 90s, who lives in Australia, my pottery teacher is now in his 80s, who lives in Cornwall. I'm in touch with them. And I hadn't, I took you took it for granted, but we had great wedges of metalwork, woodwork, pottery, sewing, cookery in the timetable whole afternoons. I remember now looking forward to a Thursday afternoon because I'd have two hours of pottery. And it was all there. And so So what was it about? It was about touching it, and it's still now my favourite bit. I tend to, because of my small studios up till now, everything's cyclical, so I'll make for six or eight weeks and then glaze for six weeks and finish and deliver. So there's this cyclical, but the best bit is when the soft clay is right there. It's all about the malleability of that material, really. And it's a and at that stage, it's a total self-indulgent meditation. You know, once the pieces are made and they're drying and they have to be fired and then glazed and then finished, you know, it's then that it becomes the work, you know, which is still very rewarding. But the most favourite bit I cherish is to just not know what I'm going to make or start a pot. I never really know how it's going to look, in effect, sort of trust to the process revealing that.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. You don't draw before you start working?
SPEAKER_01I do sketches, yes. So, for instance, at the moment I'm working on three gourds for a Villa Mallorca, and it's got to be based on the Mallorcan flora and fauna. And so I did sketches for them, and I said, you have to know that during the process things might change. And in fact, I presented each of the three giant gourds that have these plants growing up to have many plants on each one. But actually, during the process, I simplified it to one that had Aleppo Pine, one that had home oak, and the other that had marigolds. So I paired it right back during the process, but I could never have known that. And I presented it to them at all times, you know, saying that's what I'm I've changed my mind slightly. It's going to they're going to be more simple than I originally proposed, simply because I don't feel well, the way I work, other people, obviously, people work differently, but I love to remain open. So I might have an idea to make one thing. The ideal is to start five, and so one thing will follow the original sketch quite strongly. The others will be a bit looser, and then there'll be two wildcards where I might even just turn them upside down or slice them in half or join them together and produce something that I never would. It's like going to a party and meeting a stranger who'll then become your friend. You know, you just don't know. And to me, that's the thing. So often when I go to Adrian Sassoon's shows where he shows my work so beautifully on the stands, it's like visiting somebody new because I had I couldn't have imagined it in the first place. So I'm very fascinated to see my own work when it's being shown, because obviously it's made in the studio and then packed and sent, and there's no really stopping and looking.
SPEAKER_00Can I can I take you back? Uh, because we just jumped forward into your that's fine, that's alright, that's all right. Um, but I I'm keen to know at school you obviously found you had a penchant for for Clay. I I seem to remember your father was a sports journalist.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00Um what did your parents make of that? Because I think you're you're you've got brothers and they're they're journalists as well. Presumably, therefore, you come from quite a literary family, I'm guessing.
SPEAKER_01Well, sports and literary, I don't know. I think good writing is really important. I think public speaking, my dad was a football commentator on the tele. And so um for the BBC or no, for ITV for the big match.
SPEAKER_00And then he was the Brian Moore and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I think they were all quite good friends, and uh, but also he was the local TV presenter for Harleck Television in Bristol. He had a little program once or twice a week, and so I don't think literally they were just they're sport fanatic, you know. I only see my dad once or twice a year now, and it has to be arranged around major sports events. Literally, it does. Uh he's adorable, but really my mum was quite creative. She sewed my dresses, she sort of did she had a lovely home, although we were middle class, all my friends always thought she was so stylish in the way that she dressed and the way that she made the home so lovely. She was really wild. My dad was quite wild away an awful lot with sports journalism, and basically they just let us get on with it. Right. You know, my dad said, What are you doing? I said, I'm thinking going on a BA, you know, and yeah, very good, carry on, you know. And it was in the day where we got a grant and our fees were paid, you know, our sales, I had this seven-year art education where I was given £2,000 a year to live, you know, and I didn't come out of it in debt. And I feel so strongly for the students now, that's a very different thing. So I don't know, it was just a different thing then. And my dad just said, as long as you're happy, as long as you know you're doing what you want to do, carry on. And that really, much like my the brilliant art department at school that I took for granted, I probably took that for granted. He wasn't at all worried that it might not turn into a profession, that wasn't an issue. Mind you, the sportiness of the family makes me not competitive but aware of success, if you see what I mean. And my but my big brother always used to say, Come on, you're not still at college, you know, when are you going to get a proper job? And I used to think, I'm going to show you, you know. So there was that in my life. So and I was the middle of two brothers who were very sort of rough and tumble, so I was quite tough and resilient, I suppose, which furnishes you to everything. But my mum was always very fun-loving, absolutely mad, you know. If we were going camping to Wales, and uh I had six friends who wanted to come, she'd say, Yeah, of course they can come. And she'd go and she was a car dealer. So she'd go She's a car dealer. She was a car dealer. When my parents got divorced, she started dealing in cars. She had a boyfriend who had cars, and so she'd just get a bigger car, and we'd all she'd pile more kids in the car. We'd all go camping, and she didn't care where we were all night, you know, because she was off having a good time. So it was very free time. Free to do the education that I wanted and free to work that way. I wanted.
SPEAKER_00You went to university polytechnic in Bristol. So you stayed in the in the area. Yes. That was a conscious decision.
SPEAKER_01My stepfather died, and I wanted to stay near my mother. So um, yeah, that was but but Bristol was perfect. I mean, it had Wally Keeler, Moe Jupp, Roger Turrell, George Rayner, uh David Robinson, great tutors, great department. I mean, it was there was no reason to go anywhere really at all. And Bristol was gorgeous. It was during the great music time where the where Ritmig and Panic and Maxim and Joy and the pop group, all this whole sort of really fizzy music thing was happening. And I had a boyfriend who was in a sound engineer with all the lots of quite good bands. So we were sort of it was very active. So yeah, it was great. There was no reason to go anywhere.
SPEAKER_00You telling me before that MoJ was particularly important at that time. Is that true?
SPEAKER_01Yes, he uh he passed away last year, didn't he? Yeah, but he was a day a week, I think, at Bristol, and a day at Cardiff, and a day at Bath and a day at Harrow and somewhere else. And he came in like a dynamo, actually, you know, in his rough old van. But um, and he'd say, Right, what do you want to do? And I'd say, Mo. I remember actually that bowl there, under those blankets, it's a tiger bowl. I remember saying to him, I want to make a giant bowl. How do I do it? And he said, Right, get a piece of wood this size, get a mountain of good conditioned clay, this, you know, this much, you know, big pile of it, and next week we'll just put the whole day aside and do it. And then the following week he said, Get anybody else who wants to watch. There were two or three others. And for the whole day, he just showed us. He sh, you know, and by teaching by showing. And at the end of the day, we had this big mould, and he we talked about edges, and he was constantly talking about whether you're trying to show the qualities of the clay or whether you're trying to show qualities of glazing. And really, if you look at his work, it's it's so much about the raw way that clay behaves. At the same time, it's so much about the figure, it's so perfectly of past, present, and future. He was just a great inspiration, practically and spiritually. You know, he had a sort of big family, extended family of foster kids, and this great community was very important to him. I think that probably had quite an influence as well. And he was a lot of fun. He was so wild and naughty, and you know, they we'd have student parties, he'd always be there smoking and drinking, and he was, you know, and his family is gorgeous, and still in touch with his children. But I wonder if I'd be making the same things, although my work is so different to his. He always whispers in my ear, you know, if that edge is going to be good, make it really good. If you're gonna leave it, you know, so he was a great tutor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But then at the Royal College, David Hamilton, three-year MA, 1983 to 86, he was just a brilliant teacher in a different way. Because he said, You've all I was with Phil Eglin and Steve Dixon and Rosa Queen, it was a very good circle. Eight students.
SPEAKER_00All making quite different work nowadays, at least. Yes, yes. Well, those, I mean, Phil and Steve's work has this kind of political edge.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it does edge to it. Yeah, yeah, and Palozzi was there at the Royal College as well, right? Who influenced them, I think, a lot. And Janice Chelenka was teaching that, Alice, Alice and Britton was there. So, again, just really lucky to you know how I think art education establishments have their moments, and it's like a sort of rolling curve, if you like, up and down, up and down. I think I was at Bristol at the right time with the most fabulous people with all the materials we wanted at our fingertips without any extra charge. And then again at the Royal College, it was a great time. Phil Eglin was a great influence, Esperantha Romero, who was a year above, Chris Tipping. Oh, they were really good group of students who were very influential and great teachers. So really lucky, really lucky.
SPEAKER_00And when did your aesthetic, the this the kind of the gourds, the pineapples, the pumpkins, when did that begin to develop? At the Royal College, before the Royal College?
SPEAKER_01No, I think well, at the Royal College, David Hamilton said to us, right, you've all got here and you're obviously quite good to have got here, but actually you need to do what you're bad at here, not what you're good at. He was very adamant about that. And so he set us all these projects that were completely against the grain. Actually, I designed London Underground stations and you know industrial things.
SPEAKER_00When you say London, you mean architects of art?
SPEAKER_01Well, they're actually real projects to design Hoburn and South Kensington, actually. And I came second in each one. I was always getting second at these big projects where you had to present everything on paper, which put me in very good stead for the work later on with architects and the public art, actually. At the time I was I felt it was so futile because I was always nearly there, but not quite the one who was chosen. But in in essence, um no, I think it's my style started to develop after. Just in the last few months, I remember starting to make what I really wanted to make again, because I wanted to use facilities at the Royal College, which was so great, it was right opposite the Albert Hall. You know, it was just in such an amazing place. I just suddenly stopped doing all the things, trying to do better at the things I was bad at and just started making again. So just in the last few months, for towards my degree show, I started making, and then into the free railway arches next to the festival hall.
SPEAKER_00I was going to ask about that, because that's that's live in London now. This is extraordinary. That you you leave the Royal College of Art and you get free space by the festival hall.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in a railway arch, which did have Tramp's toilet on the front doorstep as you went in, and there were pigeons, and I actually got a deathly illness. We never knew where it came from. I got mening the killer meningitis while I had the studio there. We never know whether it was linked, it was closed down while I was ill. But it's essentially it was a free railway arch. Ken Livingston was the Lord Mayor of London. There were these empty, rather derelict arches that he had these canopies, yes. And he and and he said these craft makers should be there on display to the public, so in the afternoons the public could come by and see what you were doing in exchange for having this free space. It was supposed to be for a year and a half, and then you were supposed to leave. So it was a stepping stone, really, out of college. Run by Lisa G and Claire West. Oh, really? At the time, yes, who I met in their office under the stairs in the railway arches who gave me a space before I'd even finished at the Royal College. I was so ready to start after seven years of education, I was chomping at the bit.
SPEAKER_00But I've read that you said it was it was the you didn't have much equipment, it was very cold, but it was the constraint that kind of taught you and shaped your work in some ways.
SPEAKER_01So when you give yourself to the process, so I was in this railway arch, there were trains going over. It wasn't the time of telephones anyway, you didn't have a mobile phone, but you couldn't have a landline because the trains were going over Hungerford Bridge, rumbling the whole tunnel. It was dark, there were no windows, there was bits of the tunnel falling onto the work, so at night you had to sort of protect it with buckets and things. But it was a space and there was a kiln for everybody to use, so I hadn't didn't have to buy any equipment really. Um and it was plumbed into the Festival Hall of Electricity, so we didn't have even an electricity bill. So I bought all my tiny tests from the Royal College that I'd been mixing glazes with with a friend, and I started painting them on the pots, and I developed this whole technique. I couldn't afford buckets of glaze, I couldn't afford a spray booth, so I had these tiny amounts of glaze and started painting them on by hand, and then if it went into the kiln and it didn't work because I wasn't paying the electricity, I put it back in instead of putting it in the bin. And so over that year and a half, 18, 20 months, I sort of developed this style that stuck with me to this day, actually. You know, since then I had a spray booth in the studio. Found I wasn't using it, I was still using my old technique. Those things set in those times are just sort of with you then, I think. And it's very I don't like the idea of spraying glaze because it's poisonous. Because we live and work at home, I'm very health and safety aware. We hoover and mop every day, we have amazing hoover filters and air filters. So I've always been aware of that. So it's a very convenient way of glazing by just directly putting it on with a brush. So I might have a pot with 20 different greens on it or 20 different blues, and it's all evolved from that time through hardship, actually.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. And so the glaze came out of the South Bank. This is when the interest happened, or you were.
SPEAKER_01It did really, the multiple firings did. At the Royal College, you couldn't because there were so many kiln bookings and so many students. So, in a way, it was the multiple firings and the layering of glazes that did it. And working in this dark railway arch with hardly any good light or anything, just working away, possibly because it was so dark. I was working by touch, and a lot of my pots are about touch these days. Very interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but uh it was yeah, fantastic, fantastic time. And there were shoemakers and felt makers, it wasn't just potters in the whole complex. And you had we had free parking, we had a pass, so I got a uh interest-free loan from the London Enterprise Agency, and I had a leather cap and a Jeep. I bought a Jeep. Everybody thought I was McHuvnell driving around in this Jeep, and uh they were great times, yeah. Very good.
SPEAKER_00There's an interesting kind of contradiction in your work, a little bit, I think, Kate, where you talk a lot about the importance of intuition in what you do, and you you make store by not thinking too much about what it is you're doing. But by the same token, you have this extraordinary library of glazes, and you're incredibly organized. You have this book. So, how does that work?
SPEAKER_01That's very interesting, isn't it? I am very organised. You know, I have about two or three thousand glazes, and they're all catalogued and really I said I think I've probably had to be as organized as that because of the space constraints that I had. You know, there's no room for odd buckets of glaze lying around, really. Again, over time one's surroundings evolve, one's style. And so I suppose with everything in total order, like the glazes downstairs, you can then be free because you've got this great foundation of security to draw upon. So you don't just sort of think, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna make, and it sort of becomes a free wild thing. There are all these sort of uh security provisions underneath, you know, everything's yeah, very organized chaos in a way, really. But yeah, no, it does. It's space here in London, you've got you know tiny spaces, and you just have to be organized. Heaven knows what's gonna happen now. I've got all this space in Kent.
SPEAKER_00And when you're at the on the South Bank, did you have a sense of where you wanted your career to go? Because it seems to me that there are at least three branches to what you do. Uh and you seem to want to reach out to as many sections of the public as you can. Because on one hand, you're doing these uh batch pieces in your studio, you obviously have the gallery-based work that you do with Adrian, and also, as you mentioned on a few occasions in this interview, the public art stuff. I mean, I think particularly uh when we met last was the Savile Row building that you did the tiles, which isn't public art but it's a big architectural project. Did you have a sense that you wanted to do all those things?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, Graeme and I had a dream that we would have in London a sort of a studio that would serve me and would serve other people and become like a little ceramic centre. So I think together we sort of had this dream. So in the railway arch, while we were in the railway arch, there was only 18 months. Graham and I found this derelict building which had hadn't sold at auction in the 80s twice, with lots of land at the back. And so we bought that, borrowed money, and started renting out spaces on the building site as soon as we could just to cover the loans and things. And so, really, that evolved. So we had a big kiln that I could use and I had a space. I actually paid the rent the same as everybody else. It was run very much as a co-op, and through the recession, the manufacturer recession, when interest rates doubled from seven to fourteen percent, we actually had to put twice as many people in the building. So it was this big, sort of beautiful, tiny building but full of people and potters working.
SPEAKER_00It's very business-minded.
SPEAKER_01It is, I always have been. You know, my mum was a car dealer, and we had to help her sell cars, you know. I always have been really business-minded, not money-minded, in as much as all I know is that I want to make enough money to keep going and to spread and to learn and to help other people. That's it's not about sort of hoarding riches or anything. But um, back to the question, it was about did I know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, really, I always wanted to make big things. So it seemed logical to place big things in public spaces. I always wanted to serve a community. So by making fancy pots that are very expensive, you're not really serving the general public community. And so I felt that that was very appropriate. Um when I got, I mentioned very briefly I had meningitis when I was in the railway arches in 87 or 8 or something like that, nine. And um, I was in hospital, in Homerton Hospital here, and uh evidently I was sort of in this coma. But when the doctor, the sort of the main doctor came and said, What did I do? Evidently, I sat up and said, I'm a potter. And I sort of pointed this courtyard outside my building and said, I could do you a fancy in this courtyard, and then I sort of flopped back down and passed out again. And then he was so impressed by this that he actually asked me to make a commission for Homerton Hospital when I got better.
SPEAKER_00That's the way to get a commission. Obviously, get meningitis.
SPEAKER_01But the fact was, it was it felt so good putting art in a hospital, especially where I'd been ill. But actually, they had the Homerton had a great partnership with the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the VA, and they had lovely art in Hackney in this rough hospital down the corridors. And as I was recovering, I saw and benefited from the art in the corridor. So that really strengthened my thing. So really doing things for schools, libraries, parks, hospitals, museums, has been my bag because it's so much job satisfaction, it's so brilliant.
SPEAKER_00But presumably, you know, in that particular public art pond, or if you're working with architects, there are a lot of ores in there. It's a terrible illusion, I'm sorry. But you have to deal with an awful lot of people, clients, architects, which is lovely. As an artist, is that lovely? I like that. Is that lovely? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I like that, you know. Helen and I, who was my workshop manager for the Savile Row project for to do the facade with 11 tons of clay, 11,000 crystalline glazed tiles. We would be in these meetings, you know, overlooking the Thames of these giant glass business tables, everybody in suits, and Helen and I would be there, and it would just be fascinating to get to know these people. Often difficult, you know. I always say, I've just handed on a little public art project to two of my assistants who've taken it on, and they come back and go, Oh my god, I understand what you mean. Because it's 5% inspiration and 95% solid, hard graft. So problem solving, actually. You know, I'm so respect architects when it because you have an idea for a building, but then it has to be done, and it's one series of catastrophes, really, after another, to get these buildings made. So it's a really high learning curve, and I love new things and new people. So I'm I'm godmother to one of the architect's kids now, you know, it's a bit you know, so really it's all about communities.
SPEAKER_00And presumably it hooks back into the projects you were doing at the Royal College.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it does really. You know, when I go through Hoburn Station and see the very good one that those pillars, I think, Jesus, mine would have been better than that. And South Kensington. I thought I'd cracked it, but it was yeah, lovely, lovely time. I mean, the Royal College was very formative in that respect. And three years. You know, you had a year to get to know it and get to know the department, then a year to play, and then a year to pull it together. I'm very sad now that it's so shortened and so tight, and so many more. I mean, it was again, as I said, I was so jammy really to go through education at that time.
SPEAKER_00I mean, one name that's cropped up uh a lot in the last half hour is your your gallerist, Adrian Sassoon. Um can we talk about how that relation started and what he's brought to your career and work?
SPEAKER_01Um I had a letter. Um, I was constantly trying to show my pot, you know, as a new maker. I went to contemporary applied arts and said, Can I have a show? And they said, No, we don't know who you are. You know, obviously there's that starting out, isn't there? And so I was constantly showing everywhere. And Adrian Sassoon, who deals uh who's an expert on antique serve, really, on the whole, and that's his primary starting point, uh, was taught by Gordon Baldwin at Eton and loved Gordon Baldwin's work and had some of his work in his home. And as people came to buy the serve or to see his seve that he was selling to the to the sort of um great collectors of the world, they'd pass the Gordon Baldwin, see it and ask what it was, and he realized that there was something, you know, some interest, I think, in New York. So I think he asked Um Contemporary Applied Arts for a list of ten people or some people who they thought might be good for him. And he wrote me a letter, and I've still got the letter. Not because I thought it was so precious at the time, just because I stuffed it in my filing cabinet and found it, you know, a few years ago, saying, I'd like to show your work, you know, would you be interested? And I remember saying to my husband, Rutland Gates, quite a good address, isn't it? That's a very good place. Should I follow this letter up? And he said, Yes, I think you should. And then I started, I met Adrian and really liked him straight away. He's two years my junior, and uh he always seemed so so full of knowledge, and that that was the historical knowledge that was so fabulous. And he started showing my work, and it became very evident that he just really wanted the best of my work, and so we sort of naturally again evolved into being exclusive. So I only show with him anything over 350 pounds is done through Adrian, and um essentially he's just given me this amazing, he sold well from the start, and things were all right. But I was teaching and I was doing this, and I was doing public art and trying to balance everything financially. But he started selling very well from the start, and he, you know, very soon said, you know, just move forward, do what you want, do what's in you, don't worry about how long it might take or how much it might cost, because we'll deal with it. And a couple of times, right at the start, you know, when I was out of money, I'd say to him, you know, would you like to buy? He bought work before, you know. Now nowadays he takes work and then sells it and I get paid. But essentially at the start, he'd buy batches of work, and so he had this amazing confidence in buying it, which gave me a confidence. So I think apart from it being really a great financial uh exchange, you know, Adrian sells uh to in places I never could have dreamt of to people I could never have dreamed of reaching. At the same time, he just gave me this confidence by buying it in the first place. And I just sort of had this confidence which my husband also gave me by building the studios and so that I could work. And so really Graham and Adrian have been hugely influential in the quantity and the quality of work that I made. I think if it had failed in the sort of expensive decorative studio ceramics department, I'd have sort of moved to the country and made bowls, I don't know, or had lots more children, I don't know. But essentially they've been huge. I mean, everything's we're all influenced by the people we meet, aren't we? And the people and I particularly get on with Agent and we trust each other and his team are just fabulous to work with. He treats us all that's an interesting point, actually. He treats his team so well and his artists so well, you know, in that he if we got it, he'll fly us to places and you know, make sure we eat very well and we're in nice hotels and looked after us. Did I actually do the same to my team? You know, his influence, you know, his design I realized it this year because I took the whole team to India, well not the whole team, but a group of eight people to India last year to the Indian Ceramics Trienale, and we all stayed in really nice places and it was all you know, it was a research trip. So my business, I have a limited company that I had to set up because of the several road job, and so it's all sort of paid for by the business, in effect. But his treatment of us filters right down to my treatment of my team, and then I hope to the people around because when you meet somebody who's has integrity and is very good, I think that's the idea that it sort of follows on, and that's the example that I'd like to set to my team to do the same, you know, along the line. So, yeah, it's great. Thank God I met him. That's all I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00So we're coming to the end of our time, but I can't not ask about the great pottery throw down. What was it like being on telly? In a hit show, a hit show.
SPEAKER_01Well, you didn't we didn't know whether it was going to be a hit show or not. We didn't know if it was going to be awful, but the you know, all the signs were quite good because the bake off, the same company, uh it's a kind, kind production company. They're kind to people, they're not cruel like these awful some of these awful TV shows. So that I was very, very adamant that it had to be a kind show. And what was it like? Well, I come from a bit from a TV family. My brother was a TV producer, so I sort of saw them doing it. So I kind of sort of had a uh thing. I did um it was really hard. Early mornings, makeup, hairdos, not my style at all. Uh, that was really hard and challenging. And actually, to sort of I think probably my character was quite suppressed in the first series. I got a bit better in the second series. Hopefully, we'll do a third series and I'll be a bit more free.
SPEAKER_00You didn't cry enough.
SPEAKER_01No, I didn't. And I didn't know Keith or Sarah. Right. We were the first day one, you know, we were put together and we I we didn't know each other. And obviously, now we we're more familiar with each other, and Keith's a very good man, very good objectives, you know, he's a very great man. So I think hopefully, if we do series three, it'll get stronger. But the key is because I think a lot of Potters were quite anti-it, you know, they thought Potter is theirs and it's going to produce a lot of average work, and you know, but but essentially it was like getting into three and a half million people's sitting rooms, and it was kids. They re- they reshowed it on a Saturday evening. And I remember sitting down and watching the Generation Game or the Fourth Scythe saga with my parents and family, and that I have had families come up to me and say we'd sit down in front of it.
SPEAKER_00Well, in a curious kind of way, the generation game was in and of itself based around craft, right? At least trying to learn the skill, albeit very quickly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. Yes, it was. There were all these influences, early influences. I could go on for ages about the singing ringing tree, this amazing fantasy kids thing, but I won't. But the TV, um, what a great thing it was, and let's hope it carries on.
SPEAKER_00Well, I was going to ask, because there are there have been rumours of another series.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there was a petition which was quite anti-BBC, so it wasn't really that effective a petition. But in effect, yeah, people loved it, and it was, and of course they loved it, because you saw the joys of clay. I mean, clay is so joyous when they made the toilet and when they made the porcelain lamps and things, it just shows the versatility of clay, which is why I do it. I'd love an architect to come to me and ask me to do lamps, for instance, and that's the sort of joy of working across. I say my price ranges from £25 to one and a half million pounds. That's the project that I've worked on.
SPEAKER_00That's really interesting that because what when people get into the kind of gallery realm, they tend to not do the cheap and less expensive end of the market, should we say? And the fact that you've kept doing that.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's so important to serve as many people as possible, isn't it? And a cup, my cup, it's a bone china cup that's made in Stoke on Trent that I design the decals for and I give them away or sell them or what have you. But you kiss a cup every day. When you use a cup, you're kissing it, you're putting it to your lips. So it's a very intimate thing, you know, and and it's about all my pots. They hopefully the objective is a a message of symbolistic optimism. And so that the the roll tops roll outwards and they offer the insides out. So it's really about communicating, and and it happens to be that it's through clay, really. You know, that's the thing.
SPEAKER_00Kate, that's a lovely, lovely place to finish. Thank you so much for your time.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. How interesting it's been chat chatting.
SPEAKER_00To learn more about Kate's work, go to Kate MaloneCeramics.com. There are images of the interviews as well as little films and other things on my Instagram page, Grant on Design. If you've enjoyed listening and want to see this podcast flourish, then please rate on review on Apple Podcasts and go to my Patreon page and make a pledge. You can find that at patreon.com forward slash material matters. You'll be helping to take the message of the importance of materials, skill, craft, and design to a whole new audience. And finally, if you want to sponsor an episode or indeed an entire series, do drop me a line on GD Gibson at bt.com. Thanks very much for listening.