This is a very rare interview with the potter Usch Spettigue.
She is creating artistic work in Suffolk, England, for over fourty years.
Here Usch speaks with Markus Zohner and tells about her life, inspiration, about the development of her technique and about her approach to pottery, about the procedures she has developed and about her views on her craft.
The interview has been recorded on August 26th and 27th 2014, in Aldeburgh and in Felixstowe, England, both times at the seashore, with strong winds and with spectacular waves.
http://spettigue.com
Usch Spettigue:
CONCENTRATING ON PURE FORM, RESEARCHING FOR NEW COLOUR
Colourful and sculptural, her new porcelain pots are designed as one-off artefacts which retain their basic function. The jugs, while suggesting natural forms, have a variety of distinctive handles - ensuring that each one is an individual.
Usch Spettigue was born in Germany and settled in England in 1963 with her English husband. She started making hand-built pottery while studying languages in Munich and went back to the craft full-time in 1973.
She established her own studio at Harkstead in 1975.
Since then she has exhibited widely in East Anglia, as well as in London, the West Country, York, the United States and Germany.
Her pots are all thrown. They are porcelain, single-fired at 1220° C in an electric kiln. Some of her pots are decorated with sgraffito, inlay or wax resist.
Creative use of slips and glazes on different clays vary texture and colour.
At present she is also concentrating on pure form with a variety of large jugs and spherical pots with inturned tops. Some of these pots are carved when they are in a leather-hard state to give a deeply grooved surface.
She is a selected member of the Anglian Potters Association and of the Suffolk Craft Society.
