I meet ceramicist Christopher Plumridge over a (virtual) cup of tea.

Christopher Plumridge never intended to become a full-time ceramicist. The artist behind Claystone Pottery was a ceramics teacher before a change in technology nudged him towards his more recent journey as an artisan potter. “In 1994, electric kilns became widely available. They didn’t require as much work and attention as gas or wood fire ones and they were a lot safer – you risked an accident if you fell asleep,” he explains.

He was 12 when he began working with clay. “My mother bought me the gift of pottery classes as a birthday present,” he recalls. He was good at throwing, even though he’d never done it before, and decided to continue the hobby as a teen. He counts it as fortunate that his high school had its own kiln.

Today, pottery gives him endless permutations of clay types, glaze compositions, kiln temperatures and firing times to try, and that’s after his imagination and hands have worked their magic to shape the unfired clay. Talking to him about his practice is like a lesson in science as much as it is an exploration of his art. “There is so much to know and learn and it takes many years of practice with repeated experimentation. It is a very rich and creative technically diverse learning experience, which has no end. All these skills come together to make a very fine piece, and that is very rewarding.”

He talks about the different results changes to any of these steps produce with enthusiasm, but freely admits there’s no such thing as absolute consistency in the craft. “What’s next to an item could change the way it turns out. I once had a glaze turn out with gold flecks in it and the customer wanted more, but I had to tell them unfortunately I couldn’t guarantee it could be replicated,” he says. “I still have items that don’t work out.”

He is particularly proud of a technique that enables him to make boxes shaped like a large macaron, where the lid fits perfectly into the bowl – a difficult manoeuvre for a ceramicist. The boxes are fired and glazed in one piece, then he splits them with a precise tap, he mimes over FaceTime.

It was this requirement for precision that both attracted him to the AUSTCS Ceramic Cup Competition as well as helped him win it. “I liked the idea of trying to conceive a practical object that has to fulfil precise criteria. This multi-faceted set of objectives is hard to achieve and challenged me to come up with a simple way of making and meeting the brief,” he explains.

The combination of shape, size and glaze made his entry very attractive, but the pièce de résistance was the typography. “I went to Italy last year and was fascinated by the Egyptian obelisks in Rome. I was mystified by the skill of the stonemasons who would have had to chisel the hieroglyphs into the extremely hard granite. I was amazed at the clarity of the final inscriptions, which are so fresh and precise today, even though they are thousands of years old.

“I thought about how writing is so important and eternal when set in stone and how ceramics is also stone that has been ground and fired to make it hard and permanent. The cups are little reminders of permanence. Forming the fully written miniature text in a finely written font into the clay surface in an elegant clear way was the biggest challenge.”

You may have seen Claystone works at venues such as fine-dining restaurant Attica, Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia store and Craft Victoria, as well as a number of homewares boutiques, in Melbourne especially. He even sold to T2 in the early days of the brand, before it grew to a size where he was unable to provide the quantities required.

In fact, tea has been a central part of his practice since his college days, he says. “The drinking of tea is an ancient ritual and practice with a wonderful history which I studied at college more than forty years ago. Ceramics and tea are synonymous as it is almost unthinkable not to drink tea from an earth-derived ceramic vessel. They go together, the teacup and the hand of the maker. I make a lot of cups.”

Fittingly, Plumridge starts the day with tea in a cup he made for himself. “I drink black tea in the morning and meditate with each sip,” he says of his personal ritual. He’s secretive about what’s inscribed on the cup, but intimates that it reminds him of the set and changeable nature of the world and the balancing act between those. A process of “navigating dreams,” he muses.

This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 16 June 2020. Mailchimp no longer allows external links to the original newsletter.