Jess Joslin, Potter
JESS JOS
stepney Green, east london
If you’ve demolished a Marmite, spring onion and Schlossberger swirl or seasonal Danish at Pophams, then you’ll be familiar with Jess Joslin’s work. The potter hand-throws plates and flecked cups for the London bakery in her studio on Stepney City Farm, as well as other tableware, including burnt-orange, stone and concrete bowls and hanging planters, which she sells online and at Klei, the shop she opened in east London’s Netil Market with fellow ceramicist Skye Corewijn, aka Lazy Eye Ceramics. Her free-flowing designs are at once modern and rustic, and showcase why what we eat from is just as important as the food itself.
“Ceramics are a natural companion to the Slow Food movement. Everyone from chefs to home cooks have become more aware of where their food comes from and have started to go out of their way to buy local produce. I think that has trickled down to craft and wanting to know where their plates come from, too. Why would you go to all the bother of sourcing some really amazing eggs, cheese, meat and vegetables to put them onto a manufactured plate?
My parents are potters and I remember making clay pizzas with my sister when we were young; we’d roll out circles of clay and make some cheese, mushroom and ham – I’m sure it all looked the same, no matter what ingredients we were making. In my second year at Camberwell art college, I just thought ‘I’m never waitressing again, I need to do this for the rest of my life,’ in that really dramatic art school way. I graduated in 2009, and my first studio was at the Chocolate Factory in Stoke Newington. It belonged to a ceramicist who was taking a year off to do her MA, so she was renting her studio with a kiln and all of her shelves. It was a great first studio because I didn’t have to invest in equipment. While I was there, I was teaching in schools in Tower Hamlets for a charity called Stitches in Time. Long story short, Stepney City Farm were looking for a potter and I was lucky enough to be granted the studio I’m in now.
“The process inspires me… Once you get the hang of things,
it’s meditative”
Jess Joslin
It’s a little farm-like; what’s nice about it is that I’ve got two big glass double doors which open out onto the farmyard and every Saturday there’s a farmer’s market. At the front of the studio I’ve got my shelves and potter’s wheel, and towards the back I have the kilns, some ware boards (when I store my work), an office-cum-kitchen and some windows. It’s very functional: full of shelves and buckets of glaze, pots wrapped in plastic, so they don’t dry out, and crates full of tools and a fair amount of packaging. There’s a cockerel who has taken to living in the farmyard in front of me, and there’s also another one around the back of the studio – they like to do a back-and-forth cock-a-doodle-do to each other. It is very peaceful on the farm, although sometimes I move the table and it will make a particular sound which causes the donkeys to make a lot of noise.
I make everything on the potter’s wheel, and it’s one of those things that’s very frustrating to learn how to do. Once you get the hang of it and, dare I say it, master it, it ends up being a bit meditative. I’m just working with muscle memory, so I could be making something and listening to a tape, off in my thoughts, and somehow it just happens that I’m making pots. It’s the process that inspires me the most. Whenever I’m throwing, I’ll get partway through the process, particularly towards the end, and then I’m always thinking of a different way of doing it: what happens if I don’t use this tool at the end? Not necessarily to make anything too rustic or unfinished, but just to almost make it not too perfect or look too manufactured. I’ve also got a little shop in Netil Market called Klei, and it’s funny how – and I notice this particularly with couples – people won’t want the same mug, they’re drawn to a particular shape, finish or colour.
There are different considerations for different settings; a chef and restaurant often want pieces which have a relatively matt surface, which is sometimes to do with plating and having a sauce that stays in once place and doesn’t run. It’s the same for stylists and photographers, who also want something with a matt finish so there’s not that bounce-back that might distract from the food. Usually when I’m selling to people who are buying for their homes, most don’t enjoy the matt finish because it’s like nails down a chalkboard. The shape of, say, a plate is also important – having something that will stack and fit neatly inside each other and not take up too much space. And that also helps for firing them in the kiln. For the first firing, you can stack pieces up, so if they already stack inside each other then I can fit more pieces in the kiln.
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My style is quite modern, but there’s also a slight nod to something country and rustic”
With restaurants, it’s very much a collaboration. They will have seen certain pieces they like and then it’s just about tweaking them to suit their setting: having a plate that’s a particular size or has more of a lip to suit what they want to serve on it, or a cup for particular coffees they want to serve. It’s just about working with them to make the right pieces. The conversation isn’t over once they’re open. As the months go on and they have a new dish or menu to offer, we work on tweaking – making a slightly different glaze or changing the shape slightly. The more I work with a restaurant, the more I understand what they need and what colours suit them. It’s really lovely to have that relationship where we’ve worked so well together in the past that I can have freedom and make things that suit their needs.
Each item has so many stages. On the first day I weigh the clay and make it on the wheel, then the next day – or if it’s a cold, dark and damp day, even the day after that – I would put the plate upside down on the wheel and finish the base. It’s a two-part process: you throw the piece and trim it, then finish the base – you’re aiming to have the same shape on the outside as on the inside, and for it to be relatively the same thickness all the way around. Then it has to dry. If it’s something small and it’s the summer, it might take a day; if it’s the winter it might take a week. And then it goes into the kiln for the first firing and that’s up to 1,000 degrees, which takes about 24 hours from reaching temperature to cooling down. I then take the piece out and dip it into a bucket of glaze, wipe the base so that the glaze doesn’t stick to the kiln shelf, and put it back into the kiln. It’s roughly another 24 hours before it’s ready to take out. I usually sand the base so that there are no scratchy bits. You obviously don’t just work on one piece, though; I work on a batch of normally 20 to 50 pieces and you also need a batch big enough to fill the kiln to make the most out of the firing. There are so many different stages, so you are back and forth working on a few different things at once.
My style is quite modern, but there’s also a slight nod to something that’s a bit country and rustic, in terms of the glazes or the way they’re used. There can be some drips or spots, it’s a bit free flowing. They’re not clean modern… Well, that’s what I hope they are.”
For more designs, visit jessjos.com
Photography: Safia Shakarchi (ceramics), Lucie Eleanor (portrait)
@jessjos
