Ulla Mead

Despite specialising in making one-off slab-built pots during her college years, Ulla established herself as a ceramic jewellery maker for many years. She has however, returned to making individual sculptural pieces. The pots that she now makes are a playful take on classic container forms, particularly the bottle. The shapes have an animated, even anthropomorphic air about them and work well in pairs or in groups.

The inspiration for them comes from a combination of work that has fascinated her over the years, coupled with an earlier obsession with life-drawing.

Ulla’s work is slab-built with either earthstone handbuilding clay or professional black clay. She works from templates allowing slight variation in assembly. Most of her pots are, after bisque firing, raku fired. Others are covered with a crackle slip and fired to 1040 degrees in her electric kiln. A more subtle crackle pattern than raku is brought out by brushing the fired pots with an ink solution. Recently she has also started using a matt glaze on top of the slip as it produces a smoother and somewhat livelier surface. The unpredictability of all three firing methods further enhances the individuality of each piece.