When I started working with this layering of two colours of clay I was aware of these traditional methods in ceramics (Agateware in England, Nerikomi in Japan) based on layering clay and cutting through the layers to reveal patterns, and my initial experiments felt too close to those traditional methods. It’s quite easy to make something beautiful when doing this (maybe a bit too easy); I needed to find a way of doing this that made sense to my work. After months of testing I developed a way of cutting and layering the clay which still leaves space for coincidence and for things to happen in the process, but there is a method that guides the work. I want the process to be visible in the imperfections, the irregular edges of the plates, they shouldn’t become too precise. The pattern here is not decorative, it is the making process made visible. Manon van Kouswijk
