I met Jess at Stepney City Farm during my horticulture training there, she was holding a sample sale in her pottery studio and I think it would be fair to say I went a bit crazy for her wares. As well as her plates, I really liked Jess's vibe, and immediately thought she would be a great owner of a Fine Tilth shirt so I made her the oatmilk one. We sat down together in her pottery studio at Stepney City Farm on a GORGEOUS Autumn day in early November to record the below chat over a slice of caramelised quince cake and some extra delicious hummus and crunchy crudités.
FT - What is your favourite part of your craft?
JJ - Probably the making element, working with my hands every day. Also the capacity for growth, I feel there's so much still to learn and do, making different shapes or making things on a different scale and the glazes and different types of firing. I am able to find enough variation in my job that is never boring. Whether it's because I'm still learning something, or there's so much variety in what I'm able to achieve. There's so much newness.
FT - What is a lesser known aspect of your job? Something that people might not expect when they think of a potter.
JJ - Doing your accounts? That's such a boring answer, but there's a certain romanticism when it comes to the idea of being a craftsperson, working with your hands, and actually there is also a certain amount of daily grind, you know? Whether it’s emails or answering DMs or just the really boring stuff, like doing your accounts, keeping track of receipts, knowing what's coming in and what's going out, dealing with HMRC. Those things take up enough time that they need to be factored in.
FT - If you had to make one item for the rest of time, what would it be?
JJ - Plates 100%!
I started making them at uni in my second year. I sort of skipped a stage, most people start with cylinders and bowls, I could kind of do those but I wasn't very proficient at them when I really got hooked on plates. It didn't matter that I couldn't make them the way I wanted, I just made them anyway, I made so many bad ones.
When I first started making them, I saw them more as decorative wall pieces, playing around with the idea of the functionality and adding in other materials. I saw them as a kind of canvas, having a design edge. Whereas now they are still a canvas but for a much more pared back decoration that comes from the colour of the clay or playing around with the thickness of the glaze and the way it's applied.
They’re the thing that I've honed my skills on the wheel through making, and that I find the easiest to make because of the time I’ve put in. I still enjoy making them the most and I can't envisage running out of ideas for them.
FT - Okay, so what did you want to be when you were a kid?
JJ - I wanted to be a potter.
I don’t necessarily know if that's truly in my heart what I wanted to be or if it was the only job I knew. My dad's a potter and my mom works in a pottery. I was interviewed as a child in primary school for BBC Newsround and they asked me what I wanted to do when I was grown up and I said a potter. That was definitely my go to answer as a child, later on in secondary school I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was really interested in the history around me growing up in the New Forest and going to school in Salisbury. So things like Stonehenge and long Barrows, and all those interesting things in the landscape. I started an A level in archaeology but at the time I wasn't able to write the essays and progress with it so I gravitated back towards the other thing that I enjoyed, which is working my hands. So I’ve gone from potter to archaeologist to potter again.
FT - If you didn't do this, what would you do instead?
JJ -I would love to be a florist actually… I don't know. I hesitated because I'm not sure if that is something I would be interested in anymore. I always thought that I couldn't do it because I am allergic to pollen, but also I just don't know if I would want to make elaborate displays for weddings that get thrown in the bin days later, I don't know if I could do that anymore. Being a potter there are considerations when it comes to the environment, I've definitely made some changes recently in the way that I do things. Ultimately, I would rather make a pot that someone could not only use for the rest of their life, but pass on through generations, rather than something that is by its nature, throw-away. A bunch of flowers is something that you will hopefully not put in the bin but in the compost, but still, in terms of its impact on the environment it doesn't seem to me like something I could get behind. So I'm not sure if I need to rethink my go-to answer…
FT - Good point, I never really thought about it that way. I had my concerns about the way a lot of flowers are grown, and also the shipping of them and all of that, but hadn't really thought down to the level of - is that a constructive use of land in our current climate? Obviously, there are ways like companion planting or if they’re a useful part of a crop rotation…
JJ - Or some kind of beneficial wildflower meadow… I guess what would interest me more is dried flowers. A beautiful bunch of flowers that could last a really long time.
FT - There was a woman on Gardeners World a few months ago, she’s a dahlia grower. She recently became more interested in drying them for the same reason, that they can last much longer. She rigged up a wire mesh across the ceiling throughout the entire house to hang and dry her flowers. So the whole house has now got a ceiling of upside down drying flowers! It looked stunning! She said they dry so well, and even change colour, with some varieties she prefers the dried version.
JJ - (Second answer to original Q) I think it's probably a farmer. Not necessarily that I would want to farm cattle or work with a big piece of land, just to have a small holding, enough for me to be self-sufficient, that type of farmer.
FT - The Big Q - What are the specific environmental concerns in your industry?
JJ - The big one is energy use, it's something that we are all having to face at the moment because of the rising energy costs. Whether you fire [your pots] with electricity, gas or wood it's a big factor.
For me personally I have been questioning how much I need to make. I've definitely scaled back the output of the studio, and stopped doing wholesale. Partly in terms of downsizing and wanting to have a better work life balance, but also not wanting to be a factory or take as much as a business. I want to enjoy the small-scale nature of what I do.
Another thing that is a more complex environmental issue that I have been researching is where my ingredients come from, specifically my glaze ingredients. When I look at the textiles or wool industry, I could buy a jumper from a designer maker and they would be able to tell me the type of sheep that the wool is from. There are small designer/maker brands that I'm able to shop with who have that kind of transparency. Whereas I might have 4 - 8 ingredients in a glaze and they come from all over the world. I have tried to speak to my suppliers but most of them don't want to know, they don't want to tell me where these things come from. I don't know if they come from opencast mines in Africa, or how they've been sourced. People are starting to talk about it, and starting to do some better research but there's a lot more to change. I'm not finding it that easy to make a piece that is made from ingredients from the UK, which is ultimately what I would love to do.
I decided not to ship outside of the UK anymore because I personally try to buy things like seasonal, local vegetables and be mindful of the things that I consume as an individual. So why as a business would I send my pots abroad? It's not to point the finger of blame on the customer but I think that we all have a duty to try and make a change in our shopping habits.
FT - Yeah, there are perfectly good potters in other countries.
JJ - It's also partly selfish, because there's now a lot of forms to fill out.
FT - It's just so interesting to hear the aspects that are problematic in your field. I'm hyper aware of the ones in fashion, and yet I am still completely ignorant when I'm walking through a pretty looking pottery shop, not getting red flags about the environmental impact at all, because I just don't know about them. So to hear about the parallel issues is really eye opening.
JJ - The good thing is that we have lots of clay in this country so it's just a case of creatively making glazes using materials that we have, which just takes a bit more effort and you have more limited outcomes, but that's okay.