Pottery with Mandy

Mandy is a potter who specializes in throwing but also uses coiling and other handbuilding techniques. Her earliest influence came from growing up in a house full of ceramics by Michael Cardew and Shoji Hameda as well as antique Japanese ceramics and French country ware collected by her artist grandfather.

At Goldsmith’s College in London, she was privileged to learn from master potters including Magdalene Odundo, Takeshi Yasuda and Lisa Hammond. Ray Silverman, a pupil of Lucie Rie, taught glaze making. During an internship with Alan Caiger-Smith she learnt production throwing producing majolica ware and lusterware and assisting with wood firings.

She moved to South Africa in 1995 and has been lecturing in ceramics for the last five years. Her teaching methods developed while lecturing include throwing techniques which avoid the risk of repetitive strain injury, coiling methods suitable for beginners and advanced students, and open ended teaching to encourage creativity.

She is inspired by her environment, especially the seashore, rocks, sand, shells and driftwood. Locally sourced materials – black ilmenite sand from the beach, acacia thorn-wood ash and additions of the coarse local clay make her work unique.

Mandy is looking forward to introducing visitors to the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape, less explored by overseas tourists but with its own unique history and culture, varied landscape and shoreline.

"It is a lovely coast all along from East London, with its red sandhills and wide sweeps of vivid green, dotted here and there with Xhosa kraals, and bordered by a ribbon of white surf, which spouts up in pillars of foam where it hits the rocks." King Solomon’s Mines. Rider Haggard