Cryccen Ceramics: Pottery inspired by the past.
Community Blog spot! Archaeology, pots, and personal journeys.
Welcome to our Community Blog Spot. Today we have the lovely Jo from Cryccen Ceramics, maker, potter, and archaeologist talking about her own love of archaeology, her journey into the world of ceramics, and what inspires her to make archaeology crafts. Take it away, Jo!
Cryccen Ceramics has just celebrated its first anniversary having been launched in Spring 2020. It has been a strange and challenging year which has brought many aspects of our lives into focus. Personally, one positive is that it has given me some time to reflect on how Cryccen has been the natural result of a culmination of the passions, studies, and meanderings of my life until this time. For this guest blog for the wonderful Ashwood Candles, I thought I would give you a brief rundown on how I arrived at the creation of Cryccen and the inspiration behind my ceramics.
Jo in her element. All photos Joanne Pegrum © 2021.
When I was a young girl, about 10 years old, my Dad would take me 'bottle digging' on Victorian rubbish dumps. This mostly involved digging with no care to health and safety, furiously searching for intact beautifully decorated pot lids or undamaged 'Cod' bottles containing marble stoppers. The day would usually culminate in us being moved on (possibly chased) by farmers or landowners, borderline unlawful but exciting! We would clean up our finds and sell them at a local flea market. To this day I have in my house Cod bottles, Victorian ink wells and beautiful green and blue glass poison bottles. It was this experience which sowed the seeds for my ambition to be an archaeologist when I grew up. I didn't understand what this truly meant at such a young age, but I did know that something fundamental was ignited in me and it would never leave me. I relished in the environment, being outdoors, the accompaniment of skylark song, being down in the earth, the organic smells, the tangible past, the anticipation of discovery. I was never deterred by the promise of finding something extraordinary but mostly finding the ordinary. It was endlessly thrilling to carefully dig out the tantalising top of a bottle or the edge of a piece of ceramic, wishing it to be intact but mostly finding just a broken remnant (the rubbish by definition). I would daydream my way into the lives of the people that had discarded these pieces and know that I had touched the items of their daily lives and mostly wondering why there was so much demand for the so-called poison bottles? I joined a young archaeologists club, loved museums and trips to Roman Verulamium and Stonehenge when you could still sit on the stones.
It was a promising start and until about 16 years old archaeology was my quietly spoken career of choice. However, with some misguidance from a school careers officer ('there's no money in that, choose something else!', as I remember) plus some general teenage angst I bypassed university, entered the world of work and accountancy (well, it was the 80's and hey, no regrets!). So, skip forward twenty something years, one science degree from the Open University, a very happy life and two kids later and I still wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. Now was the time to realise this and I enrolled to do an archaeology degree with the University of Leicester and spent the next five years in study heaven.
It was in the middle of a field of stubble in Kent, England, in the unusually scorching summer heat with again skylarks singing on high that I experienced my first archaeological excavation. The brick earth was baked dry and unforgiving, and the trowels of my fellow field school students were ringing as we laboured through the layers. I didn't really know what I was doing, I was such a rookie, all theory, and no experience but I could not stop smiling. It was true contentment as I felt completely at peace with my true self and the 10-year-old girl had realised her dream. We unearthed part of a Roman octagonal temple over those couple of weeks. Amazing. Most of the digs I have been on, from the Iron Age to the Tudor have revealed the ordinary in all its glory, no treasure (as people always ask), but I have revelled in them and the fun and discipline of their subsequent interpretation.
Sadly, I did not go on to be a professional archaeologist but what I have done is be involved on a voluntary basis and have archaeology in my life. I volunteer on digs and in museums, talking to people about archaeology and helping in archaeological stores. Oh, and not to forget mudlarking along the Thames foreshore, the most amazing supply of 'rubbish' from London's past.
So, to Cryccen Ceramics. Pots have always been my favourite artefacts. It is the combination of the aesthetic with the practical which I find so intriguing and satisfying. I love that pottery in its most basic form is the taking of a piece of the earth, lighting a fire, making something by hand, which inevitably is unique to the hand of the maker, and after some jeopardy having a finished practical object. This object can then survive for thousands of years to be discovered by someone who can hold it in their hands, appreciate and replicate the skills and objectives of a person in the long distant past, understanding and connecting with them. Plus, we know pottery, we use it every day, we understand a favourite mug!
Making ceramics myself has been a natural extension of my archaeological passion. My venture into making pottery is relatively recent. It has been a very steep learning curve and I feel it will be for evermore. My driving force is to learn and understand, so I explore and research archaeological sites and artefacts then use my knowledge and experiences as inspiration to create something from clay as an expression of this. The name Cryccen I found in a dictionary when finishing my dissertation. It is Anglo Saxon (Old English) for ‘made of clay’, the perfect descriptive. I don’t set out to make replicas of ancient pottery but rather to catch the essence of a style, process or place and hopefully turn it into an object that others appreciate and enjoy.
Being more than a bit obsessed with the Neolithic my first targeted venture into exploring, finding inspiration, and creating originated in the summer of 2019 when I took a long awaited to trip Kilmartin Glen in Scotland. For those who are not familiar with this stunning place the glen contains over 20 Neolithic chambered cairns, stone circles, ‘cup-and -ring’ rock art (with Achnabreck having the largest cup-and-ring marked rock sheet in Europe), a Bronze Age linear cemetery and much more. All of this is accessible and tangible and a total immersion in prehistory. After being up close to the mark making found throughout the glen I then incorporated cup-and-ring style markings into simple pieces such as soap dishes and called them the Achnabreac range. More inspiration came from a summer solstice visit to Stonehenge and stone circle sites on the Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall which led to making my stone circle tea light holders.
I have researched Neolithic pottery, stared at it in museum cabinets and used the dimensions and processes to make my own pots, discovering the love of coiling, burnishing clay, and fashioning lugs. My aim is to create ceramic pieces that resonate with people in some way, either through the narrative of their inspiration or purely for their aesthetic or practical qualities. It is a fine (and challenging) line to navigate between personal interest and producing something commercial but hopefully I am on the right path.
Now that our freedoms to travel begin to be lifted it is time to go exploring again and connect with places and things for more inspiration. Desk top research is great, but you cannot beat seeing the real thing. Also, time to develop some more pottery skills and throw a pot or two...maybe.
And finally, as an unexpected consequence, creating Cryccen has connected me with some amazing creative people, such as the lovely Ash, who also share my love of archaeology. It is turning out to be a wonderful, supportive community that gives me the confidence to carry on my path and I am grateful for that.
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