Ian Currie Memorial Lecture with Dr Steve Harrison
The 2023 Ian Currie Memorial Lecture was presented for the first time in Ipswich, supporting the Siliceous Exhibition and CAQ’s other activities focused on the community in this historic pottery district.
This lecture has been held every year to honour Ian Currie, who passed away in 2011 from the effects of mesothelioma. Dr Steven Harrison was the first invited speaker a decade ago and returned this year to present again. We welcomed Christine Currie and Steve’s partner Janine King to the audience.
Ian Currie was a nationally recognised potter making mainly thrown functional vessels both domestic and monumental in scale. His preferred fuel was wood but he was experienced in gas and electric firing as well. Principally though he became an educator and leaped at the chance to close the knowledge gap for students striving to understand the complexities of glaze.
In 1979, as a first step in the development of what was to become an internationally recognised tool for glaze chemistry Ian took a group of CAQ members, (then the Qld Potters Assoc.), on a journey of discovery for 3 hours a week for 30 weeks. It was from this course, characterised by shared learning, that Ian honed this topic into a correspondence course for Flying Arts Qld. He presented it personally throughout the state as part of the fly-in arts programme. In 1984 he revised this information into his first book, “Stoneware Glazes: A Systematic Approach”. He became aware that computers would help with the complicated calculations, and subsequently the internet brought international recognition of his easy to understand and fear reducing theory on glaze composition. Ian’s second book on the subject was “Revealing Glazes: Using the Grid Method”, 2000, which further de-mystifies this topic.
The “Calculations” website page is still available, thanks to the Currie family for maintaining it, and makes the balancing of fluxes, silica and alumina a breeze when seeking an optimum glaze melt or quality.
It is intriguing to compare the careers of Ian and Steve – who have so much in common: friends, both woodfirers, teachers, authors, kiln builders, inventors, living in quiet rural precincts, passionate about the environment and sustainability, AND fascinated about glaze content and chemistry.
Steve is heavily involved in clay bodies as well, and porcelains in particular. He shared the results of a special fossicking experience finding a small rock that spent three years of its ‘found’ life on a bookshelf before being transformed into a beautiful (porcelain) bowl. That material sadly is no longer available, now buried under ‘progress’. Steve’s interest in the beginnings of porcelain forged an in-depth study and travels around the globe to look and feel these unique deposits of hard-paste, single-stone porcelains. He discovered they all look much the same as his small rock sample, with the iron oxide staining the cracks where water had carried it through. Steve showed images of how in China they still process the rock into plastic clay pretty much the same way they have done it for hundreds of years. His booklet, “5 Stones”, 2017, tells the story of his discoveries.
Steve and partner, Janine King, set up Loopline Pottery in Balmoral Village in The Southern Highlands of NSW in the late 70s. Steve’s PhD in 1998 was focused on their research of ceramic raw materials in this district. He admits that this academic research deeply informed his creative practice.
In his presentation, Steve took us through his modus operandi – searching for and finding deposits of suitable ingredients, testing them, working out ways to gather and transport sufficient quantities back to the pottery. His talk was supported by visuals of quarries, creeks, bush tracks, beaches, etc. from which materials were gathered then processed, applied and fired, culminating in a glaze or clay body. Steve’s porcelain output is almost entirely in the form of bowls or tea-bowls, simply glazed, usually in one particular glaze, applied so as to leave the viewer aware of the body used. He described throwing his porcelain as like throwing sand and water, the consistency of a sand-castle. There was very little you could do with it apart from a thick walled rudimentary bowl that required a lot of turning later.
Steve has a well-regarded reputation for building kilns, especially wood-burning ones (see booklet “Laid Back Wood Firing”), but he has also made electric and gas versions. He explained how he had combined these two fuels by installing small gas burners in the base of an electric kiln to enable reduction to start at about 1000° and continue for about 3 hours. His wood firings are completed in about 14 hours. The light deposit of ash is all that is required to add magic to his rock-glazed porcelains.
As a passionate conserver of everything, an ongoing project has been to use solar power as much as possible, adding Tesler batteries when affordable to retain daytime generated energy. He explained how he is able to successfully fire an electric kiln (or two) as well as power most of their property and studio needs from a 17kw system.
Through the presentation we were enthralled, amused, and astonished at Steve’s (and Janine’s) resourcefulness, energy, and lateral thinking that was applied to much of their practice, to not only find almost all their materials in the local countryside, but also make or modify the equipment to mill them and mix them. Indeed it seemed that there was nothing that Steve and Janine wouldn’t tackle, with or without architect/builder/friend help, to create their home haven. We were treated to an extraordinary tale about finding and obtaining a plentiful supply of sandstone bricks, identical to those used for the ‘schoolhouse’ on his property. With only an afternoon to secure the deal, and a weekend of planning, demolition of the two-story building at Mittagong railway station began first thing Monday morning. There was a Wednesday deadline (plus a couple of bonus days) by which, with the help of friends and supporters he was able to truck everything back home. It was inspiring to hear how much time and effort goes into realising a commitment to living sustainably, and in doing so treating earth and humanity with love and respect.
Rebuilding and personal recovery has been a slow process but new claywork has started to flow from the new studio, and not surprisingly, bears reference to the life-threatening experiences they and their neighbours endured, along with the recovering vegetation and wildlife. The latter is a personal theme of Janine’s work.
In the words of the Australian Art Valuer, Sonja Legge; “What Steve makes is beautiful, unpretentious, and breathtaking in its integrity”. I could apply this sentiment to the man himself.
Text by Dianne Peach. This article was first published in CAQ’s Quarterly Bulletin December 2023.