Abi originates from Wokingham and started pottery around twenty years ago following a career as a dancer, then teacher of dance and exercise. She began with a weekly pottery course, progressing to an apprentice position in a professional pottery alongside craft and design courses. She is inspired by the landscapes that surround her every day and her studio is in a barn attached to the old Mill house where she lives on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon. Abi uses a mix of porcelain and Raku clay to make her Raku pots. The Raku clay helps to combat the thermal shock of the firing when the pots are removed from the kiln at 1000 degrees centigrade and placed in a reduction bin with sawdust. Abi throws her work on the wheel creating elegant bottles and round moon jars. The work is then decorated with copper wash that develops beautiful colours and flashes on the pot’s surface, or using the ‘Naked Raku’ technique when the resist slip and glaze cracks off the pot leaving a subtle black smoke mark on its burnished surface. Abi mixes her own glazes and washes, and has built her own Raku kiln that the pots are fired in. She finds the unpredictability of Raku creates a finished result that’s very exciting, for her as the maker and more importantly, the onlooker.