Heirlooms of the Future: PATIA DAVIS

Patia Davis’s functional, high-fired porcelain and slip decorated earthenware pieces are layered with calm tones, and have a movement that reflects the natural world

- RHIANNON BATTEN

If you ask potters why they’re drawn to ceramics, they tend to fall into certain categories, says Patia Davis. ‘Some are excited by the fire element and the chemistry, but I’m a mud and water girl,’ she says. ‘It’s all critical – all aspects of ceramics have to work together – but I love stirring up slip. It’s just yummy.’

That appetite for the glossy, tactile, liquid nature of the process is evident in the painterly, decorative style of Patia’s work, with its whorls, loops, drips, trails and feather-light brushstrokes. From her workshop at Wobage Farm, the Herefordshire community of makers where she has worked for over three decades, Patia produces functional high-fired porcelain and slip-decorated earthenware glazed using a soft palette of cream, white, green, browny black ‘and occasionally a little bit of blue’.

The limited palette is, in part, the legacy of a watercolor painting course Patia took aged 17, where she was taught that you only really need three colours – two blues, two yellows and two reds. ‘The teacher’s paintings were so harmonious that I’ve hung on to that advice,’ she says. ‘I love green. An evening class student once begged me for blue and I joked that “I can only let you have blue because if I put a green glaze over it, it will go a lovely mossy green.” Colour and mood and a sense of calm are really important.’