Mother nature
ILONA GLASTONBURY MAKES POTTERY USING MATERIALS SOURCED AROUND HER BAROSSA VALLEY HOME.
IN THE HEART of the Barossa Valley at Tanunda, Ilona Glastonbury makes pottery in a small studio out the back of an old cottage. This is the home she’s shared with her husband Craig Butcher for the past 11 years, and now their children, Atticus, seven, and Lottie, five. Chickens scratch outside the studio door, while inside Ilona moulds her beautifully tactile bespoke objects — spoons, bowls, dishes and plates. It’s all done in the ‘locavore’ tradition, meaning Ilona sources 99 per cent of her materials locally, to minimise her impact on the environment. Most of the clay she uses is harvested just 40 kilometres away from her home. When she sells online, her wrapping paper is also biodegradable, she uses natural jute twine ties and swing tags of recycled paper. Sustainability and ethical production is the ethos that drives her in work and life. “We all need to have things to eat off and to drink our tea out of, but we need to provide ethical and eco-minded alternatives for people,” Ilona says. “I was aware of the locavore movement, and pulled those ideas of accountability and lowering the carbon footprint when sourcing materials for my work.” Ilona started her pottery business Otti Made two years ago. ‘Otti’ is a tribute to Atticus and Lottie, derived from the middle letters of their names. For Ilona, who studied visual arts and practiced as an artist while running her own gallery, it was having children that led her to refocus. “They were the ones that made me think intensely and decide I needed to do something,” she adds. “When Lottie came along, I had this little crisis about the future and my responsibility as a parent bringing two children into this place without having done my due diligence about what the future held for them. I really wanted to address that and to be able to look them in the eye when they’re 30 or 40, if they ask me: ‘What did you actually do about climate change?’ and say, ‘I did everything I could’. So I took my skill set, and what I was interested in, thought about the things people need and can’t live without, and the things that gave me joy. All those things culminated after Lottie was born and I thought homewares was the way I wanted to go.” Not long after she started a second business, The Hundred Mile Home, an online store, representing the works of a small pool of like-minded artists — all located within 100 miles. She was inspired by her friend, Barossa metal and wood artist Peter Hart. “Pete gave me a wooden spoon as a gift. He told me that he had picked up a seed from a tree, planted the seed, cut a limb off the tree, left that limb to cure in his shed for 10 years, then made this spoon from the wood. I thought, ‘Why isn’t everything like this? And why can’t we know where everything comes from?’ It is one of the most precious presents I’ve been given. Now I work with local artisans using local materials to create a small range. I always have my eyes open for people who are interested in using local materials.” Peter is represented by The Hundred Mile Home, as is his partner, painter and potter Kate Jenkins. Ilona travels to the northern Barossa, where Peter and Kate live, to fire her work in Kate’s kiln. “We fire on Friday and I glaze stuff out there as well. I feel quite blessed as Kate studied at the Jam Factory and, in some ways, she’s giving me an apprenticeship in firing and glazing — chemistry stuff.” Ilona has just had a kiln installed in her own pottery studio and plans to burn vines from local vineyards to ash to use as a component in a glaze. “There’s so much to learn, particularly if you’re concerned about the materials and where they come from. I think I chose the hard path and it is a fraught thing... I do a happy dance when I open a kiln and there’s really good stuff in there.” >