Deborah works from her studio on her small family farm in the middle of Devon. She works with porcelain and stoneware using hand building, pinching and wheel throwing techniques. She generally fires in an electric kiln but sometimes smoke fires in a barrel outside using foraged materials found on her walks with her dog Murphy. She predominately works with porcelain to create paper thin vessels that hold lights and stoneware thrown on the wheel and smoke fired in a barrel. She loves the versatility and vastly different end results of using these different clays, making processes and firing processes, the hand built porcelain being fragile and delicate in comparison to the robustness of the wheel thrown smoke fired stoneware.

 

Deborah's influences and inspirations are mainly drawn from her surroundings, her view of Dartmoor being the most influential and her day to day life in the countryside. For the smoke fired ceramics, plant based materials are foraged on her daily walks to use fo mark marking. Vessels are wheel thrown for this process and bisque fired in an electric kiln first.

Born on the South Devon coast, Deborah often draws on her memories and love of the sea to inspire her work and is particularly apparent within her abstract porcelain vessels. She draws on her abstract sketches to influence the porcelain decoration also using abstract mark making techniques.