You take a sheet of clay, you twist it at one end, you join one end onto the other and it goes from being a flat, two edged, two surfaced piece to having only a single edge and one single continuous surface.

I use Ashref Hanna Raku clay but it is fired and is quite tolerant to firing to stoneware.

So on the unglazed pieces I fire to just over 1200 degrees centigrade.

So it is fully vitrified stoneware.

I start off by wedging the clay, simply cutting it and reorienting the two halves relative to one another.

Sealing over that surface around those cut edges, recutting, rejoining and so I'm constantly reorienting all the particles of the clay.

Once I've done that I put the clay through the slab roller, create a long slab.

The proportions of the width and the length are something that I just practice with.

There is a sort of harmony between the width and the length which creates a nice depth to the form.

I then work over with the rib to consolidate the slab.

I then trim it down to rough width and length and then I set it to one side to dry out for several hours.

Having allowed it to dry to that point where it's slightly stiff,

I then need to prepare the edges for the great deal of stretching that they're going to need to do when I twist that slab.

So I add just a little bit of moisture along each edge and work over that edge.

Once I've done that I'm then ready to start to stretch and manipulate that slab so that I can join the two edges to become one.

I need to pre-stress that whole slab down its length to get that stretch along the edge but also to get the whole slab limbered up.

Once I've done that then I'm able to take one end and bring it into contact with the other and to begin to gently make that connection between those two edges.

That joining process is slightly more gradual than you might think.

I then start the process of beginning to shape the piece and start to create that lovely curve across the width which actually allows the whole form to bounce into three dimensions.

That's where I start to introduce the heat gun.

It allows me to speed up that process of stiffening and to concentrate it in certain parts of the slab and not others.

So the part that I've begun to shape I can force dry a little bit so that it's a little more able to support its shape.

And through that process which is quite lengthy and quite gradual I suppose, slowly this form begins to emerge from this flat, slightly dead, single plane into something that really moves through three dimensions.

I've recently started creating these openings in the form and they've been interesting to develop.

What I really like about those is that opening up of new sight lines and the creation of new symmetries and relationships between the edge and the edge of the opening.

And the intention really is that, both with the edges and the opening, is that they are almost, they're not cuts.

They are almost the appearance of transparency where I've taken that clay away.

I start off with a fairly thick slab, ten, eleven, maybe even twelve millimetres thick at the beginning.

So I have to gradually pare that clay away to create that sense of levity.

And so there's a lot of paring down.

It takes place over quite a long period of time using the serrated kidney to the much more delicate and much more nuanced refinement with the smooth kidney.

At which point I'm really looking in the initial stages at refining that surface so that there's no faceting, there's no, you've got a nice gradual transition of shadows.

The final part of that refinement of the edge is just to add a little bit of moisture and to burnish with a wooden tool.

I like boxwood, I love the fine grain of it and the way that it allows me to polish that edge.

I want it to look strong enough to be flamboyant, to be slightly ostentatious.

I don't want it to be a delicate wallflower.

I want it to look robust enough to be able to celebrate that sense of movement and that motion.