Conversing With Clay | Lily Pearmain Ceramics

Self-taught potter Lily Pearmain joins me on Zoom from her southeast London studio, where a jumble of handmade vessels in various stages of completion perch on the shelves behind her. She wears a potter’s apron, and it is clear our call will be framed by sessions at the throwing wheel. Though this is her reality now, her journey shows that not all crafts are vocational, and it can take time to find your creative footing.

After studying language and living in Russia after university, Lily returned to the UK to do something “with no thinking involved.” Her friend was starting a bakery, and she decided working with her hands would be a welcomed respite from academia. But it wasn’t quite the easy lifestyle she had envisioned. “It was great, but it was really exhausting,” she reflects. “I got to the age of 25 and realised I had worked every single Saturday for years. So I thought, maybe this isn’t it.”

In search of a healthier work-life balance and a new creative outlet, Lily enrolled in a beginner's pottery class. She initially signed up for a jewellery-making course at an adult education centre across the city, but fate intervened. “There weren’t enough students to run the jewellery class, so the organiser rang me up and said, ‘The pottery course is on the same day, and it costs the same amount.’” Arriving at the first class, she found herself in a playful environment; women of all ages gathered around tables and talked as they moulded the clay, not particularly concerned about the outcome. “I was just enjoying the process of squidging some clay about without it feeling pressured,” Lily recalls. “The opportunity to find my own way with it was really good for me – it gave me a lot of independence and confidence.”

Since then, her relationship with clay has been ‘organic’, a meandering journey culminating in her creating full-time. She predominantly works on the wheel, but as we speak, she is in an exploratory phase of her practice. “I love playing with clay because it allows me to decide what my angle is as I go and work in quite an intuitive way.” In some ways, the material leaves her no choice. She picks up a jug from the shelf behind her, characterised by its wide, rounded silhouette. “Clay wants to move into this form,” she enthuses. “It wants this generous belly shape. When I stopped fighting it, it became a conversation between me and the clay.”

Lily sources most of her stoneware clay from the UK, working with suppliers who chime with her innate sense of Britishness. “My grandparents were refugees, yet a lot of my work is very, very British,” she says. “I like that I can stand on this shoulder of tradition, even though I'm kind of from outside it.” Her grandmother grew up in a village in West Germany and shared stories about the local pottery. “There was no road to the workshop, and she told me that when they were firing, they would put popcorn kernels on the top of the kiln. You could follow the smell of it popping to find your way to the pottery,” she laughs. “It sounds very Hansel and Gretal.”

While Lily references traditions and artists she finds inspiring – German salt glazing and Randy Johnston’s abstract forms among them – her goal when she sits at the wheel is simply to create ‘a good pot’. Function is an important quality of her work, yet she recognises that it’s not necessarily what draws people to her pieces. “My driving force is making a pot that functions beautifully, looks nice and feels right”, she explains. “But when people buy a mug, it's not really about the mug. It's about appreciating this craft that spans generations.”

Much of Lily’s work is characterised by imprints left by the processes, which she chooses not to remove or cover. Her mugs for TOAST feature finger marks at the base, left from her dipping the forms in glaze. She sees this unique detail as a means of connecting to the people who purchase her ceramics. “I try to leave as much of a trace of myself as possible,” she says. “Fingerprints and throwing lines on the side shows that someone has learned how to throw and has dedicated their life to doing it well.” She has observed that when people pick up her mugs, their instinct is usually to place their own fingerprints over hers. “It’s beautiful – it’s like we’re holding hands.”

One of the mugs she has created for TOAST features a striped porcelain slip – a technique Lily discovered after finding that traditional porcelain didn’t align with her style. Instead of wasting the porcelain, she dried it out, mixed it with water and created a smooth, velvet-like consistency. An idea came to her, inspired by her interest in British pottery. “The tradition of putting slip on the outside of pots is a very English thing to do, but it's typically done with earthenware clay. So I thought, ‘What if I take an earthenware approach to slipware, but put it on to stoneware and see what happens?’"

Like all of Lily’s ceramics, these final pieces have emerged from a process of trial and error, following impulses and tuning into the natural inclination of the clay. “If something's not working, it's not working,” she states simply. “There's so much to explore, so I'm not going to get bogged down in something that doesn't work. I'm going to carry on making because that's how I learn, and that's what is fun and satisfying to me.”

Discover our collection of Lily Pearmain Ceramics.

Lily wears the TOAST Wool Flannel Sleeveless Jacket and Jude Check Wool Trousers.

Words by Bébhinn Campbell.

Photography by India Hobson.