Anna Lambert

Anna Lambert, nationally recognised full time maker, makes hand-built earthenware ceramics using various techniques including slab-building, modelling and painted slips. Using a variety of techniques, each of her pieces are entirely unique.

Each piece is developed during the making stage using drawing in the landscape as a starting point. Often assembling her pieces from fine pliable sheets (slabs) of clay – white earthenware mixed with a rougher clay – she then alters, cuts and fettles them. On occasion she may add sections of texture from carved or lino cut designs.

When the form is finished, pieces are painted with multiple layers of coloured slips, often with darker underpainting, which may then be cut back to reveal the embossed pattern or drawn on with sgraffitto. Further layers may be added with the use of hand cut tissue paper stencils and masks. The pieces are bisque fired to 1100ºC before being inlaid with contrasting slips in the sgraffitto areas and dipped or sprayed with a lead bisilicate glaze. The final firing is to 1105ºC.

Anna‘s ideas reflect an interest in her locality exploring narratives relating to, amongst other things, climate change in her local landscape and the regeneration of orchards. Inspired by new nature writing, she engages with a common language beyond pastoral sentimentality, combining drawing with the abstract qualities of pots, their spaces, edges and surfaces.