About | Nick Membery Pottery

About Me

I have been making stoneware pottery for over 30 years and have been living and working in
Carmarthenshire, West Wales, for more than 20 of those. After about 25 years of making a repeated
catalogue range, I gradually started making pots which, while still always intended for use, are of a
more individual nature. Most of all they are to be enjoyed and, when coupled with the ceremony of
eating good food in good company, I hope they can be truly life-enriching. My work, in its own small
way, is the antithesis of mass production and consumerism.

I realised a long-held ambition early in 2019 when I built and started firing my work in a large wood-
fired kiln. I am really enjoying this new direction, with each pot unique and each one’s own
idiosyncrasies to be celebrated and embraced.

Increasingly, my pots take on the colours and tones of the environment that surrounds me. More
and more, I gather local materials, unique to my location, for decorating and glazing my work: clay,
ash and stone are all used to inextricably connect me, and my pots, to where I live.

Working Philosophy

For me, making pottery is not about looking for shortcuts. From mixing my own clay body, collecting,
washing, grinding, and drying local materials to sourcing, cutting, and seasoning wood for the firing of
the kiln, I do it all the long way. All this takes much time and is often exhausting. For pre-industrial
artisans all this would have been the norm, but today all materials are easily bought, processed, and
ready to go, straight from the potters’ merchant. So, for me, it’s about more - it’s about being
responsible for one’s materials and it’s about being grounded to the work and to one’s own
particular geographical location. The place, the pots and I are all connected as one.

While I make a limited number of shapes using just a few materials, the process itself ensures
infinite variation. I have come to realise that refinement through repetition only feels fulfilling if a
constant element of surprise is present. This can come from the variations in raw materials as well as
in the firing with wood.

Local clay, estuarine silt, and basalt rock, along with an always-evolving supply of wood ash, have all
come to be essential for the making of my glazes. I am continually gathering, processing, and testing
of all my found materials. Glazing and firing is like walking a tightrope - my pots are intended for
regular handling and use, so they must be fit for purpose. And yet, pushing glaze and clay close to its
limits, with its inherent danger, when combined with the heat of the fire, just sometimes, produces
the kind of quietly beautiful pots in a noisy world that I so dearly seek.

Firing with wood for the last 5 years or so, seems like an inevitability now, when I look at my journey
through potting. Where I live in rural Wales, I am surrounded by unimproved farmland and small
commercial forestry enclosures. Almost all fuel for the kiln is gathered within a mile or two from the
pottery. Using a mix of native hardwoods and spruce, I then allow the kiln and the flame to impart
their final impact on the wares within.