Ursula Waechter
Ursula Waechter produces a range of functional and decorative tin-glazed earthenware. Her pots are primarily wheel-thrown with some shapes made by press-moulding.
Waechter uses red clay, which she covers with a white tin glaze. The designs are brush-painted free-hand with mixtures of coloured oxides or stains.
In a digital world of screens and pressing buttons, she finds it grounding to work with a multitude of manual processes and the skills that are involved in making tin-glazed earthenware pottery.
Waechter is interested in making items for use that are tactile and visually satisfying by controlling the processes of making, painting and firing. The finish of the underneath and the foot of the pot is as important to her as the position of the design on the shape or the quality of the glaze and richness of the fired oxides.
Waechter explores form and painting with the aim that each informs the other. She thinks of her work as evolving using the finished work as a reference point by which to move on from.
She is largely influenced by painting on ceramics from Persia, Spain and China, admiring their fluency and skill with the brush.