ROBINA JACK

FORMER STAINED-GLASS ARTIST TURNED POTTER

ALTHOUGH I did ceramics at boarding school (back in the dark ages), I was like a leaf blowing in the wind in those days and ended up working as a gardener in Regent’s Park, which is where I met my husband Guy (Taplin, sculptor) who looked after the park’s birds. A little later, I went to the Central School of Arts and Crafts, as it was known then, to do a part-time stained-glass course before then working with acid-etched stained glass until about 10 years ago. I knew that the stained-glass chemical fumes weren’t good for me so I joined a local pottery evening class instead, going once a week for about three years. Unlike the constraints of glass, clay is endlessly malleable. I am driven by a love for pattern and colour, decorating earthenware pots made from my own set of moulds (fired in my own kiln at our house in Essex) in coloured slips and transparent glazes with the same animal, plant and coastal motifs I used for my stained glass. Boats and water scenes, flowers, dogs, chickens and horses, leopards and polar bears are all painted quite primitively, and drawn from memory or imagination. I don’t want them to look too realistic. I work on six or seven pieces of greenware, or unfired pottery, at a time, using cut-out shapes to help plan what I’ll do and colours that simply make me feel good. I’ve always worked like that – my beginnings never know my ends. For inspiration, I look around the house at old clothes, fabrics, carpets and the masses of navy memorabilia belonging to Guy. Early designs came from a pair of 1940s old-fashioned chintz curtains hanging in our sitting room. A nostalgia for the slower-paced life of my 50s’ childhood plays a big part in my work; the dots and stripes, always so exciting, the legacy of being a long-time doodler.