Plate

Bold brushstrokes, incised text and handprints animate the surface of this wood-fired form with the dynamism of action painting. The vitality of this work also sits deep within the clay body – a terrain of incisions, ruptures and encrustations. Sand-brown ash glazes and slips saturate the surface and add to its earthiness.

Since 1994 Charles Bound has fired work in an anagama kiln, a traditional outdoor Japanese tunnel kiln. Large plates are fired upright on their rims, full-frontal into the fire. Bound describes the kiln as an active partner in his work and he says it, ‘offers things I would never have seen or considered had I greater technical expertise and control of the process and outcomes’. [1]

Sim Panaser, July 2020

[1] Charles Bound, ‘Fired Earth’, Ceramic Review, 224 (March/April 2007), 32-35 (p. 34).