I had the month of April in the new studio on the ground floor of the Beagle Cross Residence – I was the first person to use the studio, there was fresh sawdust on the countertops. I had given the project some thought in terms of ways to attach a horse and rider to a tile, or to build the horse free of the tile. I had an earthenware ridge tile for measurement and had to anticipate the shrinkage that would occur in the cone 10 firing. I used some throwing clay taken from the shed, and added molochite, as it was the only grit I could find. At first I really didn’t know what I was going to do – what kind of people on the horses etc. At this stage I still had not idea of the equestrian ridge tile history or any idea of the context of this project – that research had not been completed yet. So this was still a personal project. I made a horse with a pro to-human figure on it and became very nervous about where this was going – but Matt Tyas walked in and said that looks like Hamada – and then I knew what I wanted to do – portraits of the main historic players at the Leach – Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada and Janet Leach. I also made an RCMP – Canadian Mountie and a couple of unspecific riders. Most of the figures were unclothed, and Alex asked if I would at least put some clothes on Leach – so I made Leach in Tweed. I found it was much easier to make detached horses, as there were problems with shrinkage and drag when they were attached to the roof tile. I did notice that the legs of the horses attached to the traditional tiles were completely blended into the tile and very thick. here was no need to make a fancy surface as these were supposed to be placed high up on a roof, so I made sigalattas of the all the clays at the Leach that I could find. As time was short all the pieces went into the bisque kiln still wet, and 6 of the 7 pieces survived. After that it was fitting them into the kiln, sharing space with the Leach standard ware. There were a few cracks here and there, but I felt pretty lucky. Matt Tyas organized an exhibition – “Across the Pond” with the four North American visiting potters of the last few years, Glenn Lewis, Warren McKenzie, Jeff Ostreich, and myself.
