Fountain Fine Art

Janet Hamer

Janet Hamer’s birds are first and foremost sculptures made in ceramics. There is excitement in the essentialised shapes and the use of colour. Hollow vessels are transformed by simple additions and persuasion into evocations of geese, ducks and grebes. A subject is always based on a particular species, observing the shape evolved for a lifestyle, the patterns and colours. The transition into fired clay, slips and glazes may appear to be true to life of may display more imaginative selectivity, moving from ornithology to sculptural choices.

Her concern has always been to explore and exploit the medium of ceramics and to revel in the wide-ranging possibilities that making presents. Through early productions of tableware, in earthenware and stoneware she learnt the techniques of throwing, turning, slabbing, pressing and pinching, plus the pulling of handles and fitting of lids. She learnt to make coloured slips and ways of applying these in combination with stoneware glazes in a series of types, Bristol glaze, Dolomite, Talc and Celadons over carved surfaces. All the work is now reduction high-fired in propane gas kilns. In a small outdoor kiln she creates a dramatic in-glaze red copper-lustre by causing smoke-reduction in the cooling cycle.

She has studied many aspects of ceramics, in workshops and galleries, particularly when researching for The Potter’s Dictionary. She travelled in China studying Celadons and local making and firing techniques, in 1981. In 1993 she made geese in very high-fired industrial porcelain at the International Ceramics Symposium in the Czech Republic. In 2003 she worked with a potter in Iceland. She has been making ceramics in South Wales for many years and her work is now widely recognised and collected. Her studio is attached to the house in a pleasant rural area close to the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal. She is currently developing ideas for toucans, parrots and macaws. When not making birds of preparing The Potter’s Dictionary, she enjoys hill walking, painting and music.

Janet Hamer has won First Prize for ceramics in the National Eisteddfod of Wales. She takes students for specialised courses run at the studio. Some time is also found for writing on ceramics including reviews published by Ceramic Review. Crefft/Craft, and Shards. Janet and Frank together wrote ‘Clay’ for Pitman/Axner and have recently revised and expanded their book ‘The Potter’s Dictionary Of Materials And Techniques’ (5th Edition, A & C Black).