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When a button is a work of art
THE FIRST THING ceramicist Mary Goldberg ever created was a tiny clay dog in primary school. Growing up, she spent her free time experimenting with arts and crafts. ‘I take raw materials like clay or wool, and turn them into something beautiful – a vase or a textile.’
Goldberg grew up in Shropshire near the famous Potteries, and went on to work as an apprentice potter. She also had a spell teaching art in secondary schools and began selling her pottery then, but found her calling by chance in the early 1980s.
She had recently moved to the Tamar Valley in Cornwall, when her eldest son sent her a postcard showing ceramic vintage buttons, which struck her as beautiful. ‘I realised that if I put two holes in a tiny clay disc it could become a button,’ she recalls. ‘I’d spend weeks on one massive bowl and if it failed it was a big problem. But buttons are so small – if they go wrong, I can just try again.’
In 1989, Goldberg started Stockwell Ceramics, working from a converted cowshed. She now makes 100,000 but- tons a year, helped by a handful of staff that sometimes includes her three grown-up children, and currently has 14 ranges of buttons (from £7.50 for four).
She has been commissioned to design special buttons for the V&A, William Morris Gallery and Chatsworth House. ‘The biggest challenge when creating buttons based on vintage designs, like the Chinese wallpaper at Chatsworth, is accurately reproducing the colours,’ says Goldberg.
To make her buttons, she cuts a small piece of clay from a slab and rolls it into a sheet using a rolling pin. Next, she slices it into button shapes with a clay cutter and leaves it to dry overnight. She finishes the drying on an Aga, then loads the buttons into a kiln for the first round of firing, known as biscuit firing.
Goldberg then paints on a white ceramic glaze. ‘Or you can use coloured or transparent glazes, or slip, which is a type of liquid clay that creates some exciting effects,’ she explains.
She returns the buttons to the kiln for a second firing that ‘matures’ the glaze. After this they are hard and glasslike, ready to be decorated, often with a tiny transfer (Goldberg edits the designs herself, then sends them to a printer who transfers them on to film using ceramic ink). Finally, the decorated button is fired a third time.
In her 30-year career, Goldberg has made hundreds of thousands of buttons, yet she never runs out of ideas. ‘Their tiny surfaces are like a canvas on which I can create miniature paintings.’ stockwellceramics.com