ceramic artist
Claire Seneviratne
Claire is a ceramic artist and creates smoke-fired pots. She is a selected professional member of the Craft Potter’s Association and the Crafts Council awarded her a setting up grant to start her business.
Claire uses porcelain due to its strong resistance to wild temperature changes during the smoke-firing process. Her pots are known as ‘fine art pots’ and are not functional. They are not suitable for holding water due to the porous quality of the unglazed burnished clay which is necessary for smoke-firing.
‘I am very interested in shape and form and love to explore how the exteriors relate to the interiors and how the surface quality effects the whole essence of the pot. I partly glaze my pots and partly burnish them. Glaze is a thin layer of glass and is fired onto the surface of the pot. I burnish the unfired clay with a smooth piece of glass (a lightbulb!). Burnishing is very time consuming but well worth it, in the smoke-firing process the burnished areas become carbonised with beautiful ethereal markings. The sawdust, smoke and fire add their own abstract expressions with some help by myself.’
The tonal contrasts of Claire’s pots ignite our imaginations, many people see landscapes, strong seas or planetary explosions. The crackled glaze and lustres are also often reminiscent of the land, patterns of fields, forests and sunlight.