EARTH bound
QUEENSLAND COUPLE MANDY AND MIKE CHANNEL THEIR CREATIVE ENERGY INTO A SOULFUL POTTERY PRACTICE
The first thought Mandy Barrett had when her partner, Mike Budworth, suggested they attend a local ceramics class together back in 2014 was, “How am I going to find time for this?” With busy work schedules – Mandy is a hairdresser and Mike, a flight attendant – he thought it could be a fun way for the pair to spend some time together.
Despite Mandy’s initial reservation, the couple left their first ceramics class feeling energised. They were so inspired that they cleared out the storage room on the lower level of their home in Queensland’s Burleigh Heads, gave it a coat of white paint, gathered tools and equipment, and transformed it into a studio. From here, they started to handcraft functional stoneware, including beautiful platters, one-off serving plates and spoons. And Earth & Baker was born.
To create their beautiful work, the couple focus on hand building rather than wheel- throwing because, Mike says, they “love the imperfection of human interaction”. They also tend to use groggier clays, such as raku, which contains various minerals that will react to glazes, creating alluring surface finishes. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, most of our work is quite organic,” explains
Mike. “There’s very little planning. It’s raw and intuitive – off the bone. What we make is fuelled by our creative energy at the time.” It can also be an unforgiving process, he admits. “You’ve got to put in a lot of work and time – it’s very involved,” he says. “I feel like I’m interacting with the piece more when I hand build; a lot more of my energy is embodied in those pieces.”
Foraging for useful and inspiring materials also plays a huge role in the couple’s creative process. On regular walks around the Burleigh Headlands, Mike frequently loses Mandy to the surrounding bushland. “I’ll look away for one second, turn back and she’s nowhere to be seen,” he says. “Then suddenly she’ll emerge!” Mandy admits that she has always been a forager. “I love finding things like discarded birds’ nests, leaves and seed pods,” she says. “We come home with all sorts of stuff and use it to imprint our clay pieces.”
While the natural environment plays a direct role in the look of their work, inspiration comes from a variety of sources. “We went out to dinner a couple of weeks ago and there was an old Chesterfield there,” says Mandy. “As soon as I saw it, I instantly started to think about how I could make a glaze that same colour.”
“We are just at the start of our journey with glazes – it’s such an expansive field” ~ MANDY
For their glazes, Mandy and Mike source raw materials from a local supplier and create mixtures based on shared recipes they find online. One of their favourites is a Japanese Shino glaze, which has a distinctive mottled look. “We particularly love the Japanese glazes,” says Mike, who, with Mandy, is experimenting with their own formula.
For now, the couple sells their pieces directly to the public and the high demand for their mottled, beautiful-to-touch pieces has delighted them. “We’d love Earth & Baker to have longevity,” says Mike. Mandy adds: “We’re passionate about what we’re doing and have a strong creative vision.”