Handbuilt Ceramics By Lone White

Lone White's handbuilt ceramics have distinctively organic forms. Influenced by visits to Asia and the natural world around her, Lone's sculptural pieces are either heavily textured, to reflect that state in Nature, or glossy, as in her crystalline glazes applied to more geometric, abstract forms. 

She uses a variety of clays for wheel thrown work but favours one special medium above others in her sculptural forms.

Seashape 2

Rainforest Form 5

Paper clay using earthenware or stoneware clay

In 1995 a New Zealand ceramist, Brian Garside, introduced Lone to paper clay. 

This amazing material has properties that allow immense flexibility of use, particularly in the joining process. Because joining can take place at any stage of the drying process, work can be left for extended periods of time. It is used in a variety of construction techniques including slabs, liquid slip, coiling and moulds.
 
Lone  then  started  making her own paper clay  (shredded paper blended until pulped  and mixed with a certain proportion of clay slip) and found that she now could make sculptural shapes, not possible with normal clay.

She usually starts with a basic form either wheel thrown or hand built and then slowly add strips of clay pieces in special shapes  around  the form.

Note how these forms of sea urchins have been built using quite thin and light weight paper clay and given texture with additional scoring or joined-on shapes. Coloured,  matte pottery glazes are then added after a preliminary bisque firing in a pottery kiln, the second firing usually being at a higher temperature than the first.

Lone works with paper clay in her Cairns studio.

The example, above, clearly shows a wheel thrown paper clay form beneath  a layer of textured hand built shapes. Details of other, half built rainforest and reef forms, which employ this process, below.

Building paper clay form

Second layer develops

Hand built forms might be made using coils or slabs of prepared clay, building up layers, which are joined to previous layers as the shape develops.

Other forms are made using a pottery wheel, which spins as the operator coaxes a lump of clay to become a hollow form by having one hand inside the vessel and the other shaping the outside, both exerting steady, upward pressure on the malleable clay.

Purple Sea Urchin

Note how these forms of sea urchins have been built using quite thin and light weight paper clay and given texture with additional scoring or joined-on shapes. Coloured,  matte pottery glazes are then added after a preliminary bisque firing in a pottery kiln, the second firing usually being at a higher temperature than the first.

Seashape 4

Do you have any questions for Lone? Please use the form, below to contact her direct or via her website.

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