ceramicist Janine roper
Janine Roper started to see her home city differently when she was looking for inspiration for her ceramic designs. She tells Sally Bailey how Bath came alive as she viewed it through an artist’s eyes
When Janine Roper can’t sleep on a summer’s morning, she creeps out of bed before anyone else is awake, makes a cup of tea and puts on her shoes, and heads down to her studio at the bottom of the garden. As dawn breaks, she starts the process of making her ceramics, pouring the liquid clay out so it has time to set before breakfast, pulling out her screen print designs and thinking about what she will make before most of the neighbourhood
has even stirred. By lunchtime, she’s often done a day’s work.
having graduated with first class honours from her ceramics degree course at Bath Spa University ten years ago, Janine, 58, has got to a place where life is pretty good. her blue and white designs, many of which are inspired by Bath’s architecture and gardens, are stocked in some of the nicest national Trust shops, and she’s even been commissioned to make pieces for highgrove.
Sitting in her studio with her Tibetan
terrier puppy, Trixie – who ignores her cosy dog bed and snuggles up on the bottom of the bookshelf nearby – Janine puts Radio 4 on, flicking between The Archers and a Queen CD, or playing opera if she’s got a lot to do and needs something rousing. On a productive day, when all the paperwork is done and items have been packed up for delivery, Janine can craft five pieces. But the intricate and long-winded process means each one won’t be finished for several days.
First she rolls out clay into thin sheets before adding the screen printed design on to it, cuts out the pieces she needs and quickly moulds it into shape while the clay is still malleable. Then the vase or trinket dish is fired in the electric kiln, glazed, and re-fired before it is eventually finished with gold lustre.
Janine is proud to be a member of the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen, which has been invaluable for providing support and encouragement in her early days, and gives her the chance to meet other craftsmen and artists who understand the occasional loneliness of working alone, as she does.
But it is her home city of Bath that has provided the inspiration for several of her illustrations. Each one is screenprinted on to the clay of her individually made flower bricks, vases, jugs and trinket trays in her signature cobalt blue and white, with hand-painted gold edges.
It comes as no surprise to know the National Trust has decided to stock her elegant pieces in some of its shops including Lacock Abbey, Dyrham Park and Stourhead.
Her ceramics were first exhibited at the Holburne Museum in 2008 for her degree show. The museum, which still sells her work, looks out over Sydney Gardens which was featured in a project for her coursework.
“I went for a walk in Sydney Gardens one day in the winter, just after Christmas,” Janine remembers. “I drew a map of the gardens with pictures on it showing the little decorative buildings, the river and the bridges over the canal which I really liked drawing. That became my design.
“The garden wasn’t somewhere I had been regularly so I didn’t know it very well,” she says. “It wasn’t far from my house but if I hadn’t done the project I wouldn’t have discovered it.
“When you’re looking for areas to sketch you notice things you wouldn’t normally pay attention to, the bridges and the details in the architecture and the balustrade where you can stand and wave to the train drivers; it made me realise how lovely it was.”
The Holburne’s renovation gave the university a one-off opportunity to display students’ work in the gallery for the annual degree show.
“I always liked the Holburne Museum when it was a bit over-crowded with lots of funny little things and it’s such a lovely building,” Janine says. “We could use all the proper old ebony-framed cases to display our work and mine was displayed against the red felt which was perfect for the blue and white. I remember looking out the window down Great Pulteney Street and feeling really lucky to be there.”
Another of her popular designs came about after visiting Prior Park, the National Trust landscape garden that looks out over the centre of the city. Janine went to explore and sketched the Palladian Bridge, the roe deer, trees and birds.
Her ceramics are also sold in the shop at Prince Charles’ Gloucestershire garden, Highgrove, and she was invited on a private tour of the grounds to seek ideas.
“You’re not allowed to take any photographs at Highgrove but I was allowed to draw under supervision,” she says. “If you take a photograph and then try to copy it you get a flat, boring design so it didn’t matter. Drawing helps me notice little details more than taking photographs does.
“It was raining but I really enjoyed it; it’s a fantastic garden. The Prince of Wales has got a lot of little structures made of wood so there were lovely things for me to look at.”
Before Janine’s work was accepted, she had to pass the prince’s rigorous ethical and environmental standards, undertaking research to show where her materials originated from. She discovered exactly where the cobalt blue oxide she uses is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and that the gold comes from a different mine in the country. Soon the designs on sale inside Highgrove’s grounds will be stocked in its high street shops, too.
Her future plans include designs based around Tetbury, some seaside scenes, and the flowers and cliffs along the Dorset coastline where she has a home, but for now her illustrations focus on the city she was brought up in.
“I’ve always loved Bath and felt lucky to live there. I did a lot of travelling when I was younger and I never found anywhere else I would rather live.”