I’m wearing three jumpers in this photo, January in my studio was cold and yet still I can’t seem to stay away from it!
Hello! I’m Fi Cooper. I make my ceramics in my small but perfect garden studio in Oxfordshire.
I have always been a maker; knitting, sewing, baking etc, and when I found ceramics I fell for it completely.
The nearest I’d come to ceramics in years were those I ate off, drank out of or dug up as sherds during my time as an archaeology student until one day I stood in a ceramics exhibition and thought about how I wanted to make things, and how making pottery had always been a desire of mine.
I joined a local ceramics class - to be honest the minute I walked in for the look around I felt that this was where I needed to be, even for just a couple of hours a week, and after the first actual lesson I was properly hooked.
For me the magic of pottery, is that I can take clay - a part of the earth - and turn it into something wonderful, useful, or both. My first attempts weren’t that successful, in fact the entire bottom fell off the first pot I ever made! but I kept going and finding my way with this astonishing material.
I learned to build by hand first, and then to throw on the wheel. I love hand building best - in this fast moving world slowing down and taking notice is important to me, I want to take time over what I make so I find the wheel a bit speedy, though sometimes I throw, just to keep my hand in. I have discovered - and this is surely true of many crafts - that there is always something to learn, to challenge and to be excited by, and as an endlessly curious person that suits me.
When I’m not making ceramics I work in a Clinical Trials Unit, it’s interesting work which requires the same attention to detail as craft, It’s proven to be a good balance to get hands on with clay after a few days in front of a computer!
Out of the studio and the office you’ll find me walking the local hills and downs, or with my nose in a book, my knitting in my hands, or wielding a trowel in the garden
I often question whether I try to fit too much into my days, but what is life if not for living and doing and making, and stroking the cat.