Sleek beauty honed on a potter’s wheel
At her potter’s wheel in a studio overlooking the Shropshire countryside, Isatu Hyde shapes home- and tableware from clay, creating sleek forms with a useful purpose
THE SOFT WHIRR of the wheel hums through Isatu Hyde’s studio as she works a circling slab of clay, drawing and smoothing its edges. Her fingers turn sticky orange as the curve of an earthenware lid begins to take form. She is totally immersed in her task as she sits beneath the large windows of the converted barn, with mid-morning light flooding through the glass from the open fields beyond. She must ensure the lid fits perfectly into the base she has already made, which now sits with other works in progress, still damp from the wheel, on wooden benches pushed against the rough stone walls. As she works, Isatu thinks of the bread the cloche will contain; how it will fill as the dough swells in the oven; the warmth of the clay as it absorbs and diffuses the heat.
Form and functionality are close to Isatu’s heart; the core around which she crafts stylish home- and tableware in the studio she established two years ago, just a few miles from her childhood home in Ludlow, Shropshire. Her work is rooted in her love of traditional, utilitarian pottery, whether that be a vase in which a single flower is placed or a chunky stew pot, around which the family can gather. “l’ve always been fascinated by the history of pottery making and like the way that many traditional cultures, as in Africa, bring sculpture and function together, even with the simplest of pots,” she says. “I also love British pre-industrial pottery: the earthenware made by small potteries throughout the country, where, again, simplicity is combined with functionality. It has an unfussy, robust beauty.”
Eye for design
Always design-focused, Isatu originally started a degree in architecture before deciding on a change of direction to study product design at Falmouth University. She then won funding from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, which supports traditional crafts, to return to Ludlow for a three-year apprenticeship with ceramicist Andrew Crouch. She credits Andrew with instilling in her the fundamentals of pottery making and how to throw and shape clay, giving her a secure foundation for experimenting with her own ideas.
Isatu rarely draws a design, but instead ‘sketches’ on the wheel, making several prototypes of what she has in mind. “Of 10 pieces, I’ll probably end up breaking down seven to reclaim the clay and fire the other three to see how they’ll look in the end,” she says. “If they’re not what I was hoping for, the process is altered and tried again. Thinking how to get the best from the piece is very much part of the process.”
Even the most utilitarian of Isatu’s pieces have a quiet elegance; something of her calm, yet resolute nature finding its way into the clay. They are usually monochrome, broken occasionally by slices of colour; their appeal coming