RACHEL FIXSEN
RACHEL FIXSEN
ABOUT
I work in stoneware, porcelain and earthenware, and am interested in creating surfaces that flow and reflect elements of the natural environment. My pieces are functional as well as decorative. The forms I make are thrown on a wheel and sometimes altered. They are inspired by the lines and curves of Byzantine glassware and ancient Roman pottery. I experiment with layered surfaces, using raw material for slips and glazes and testing extensively.
I use layers of slip to build up the surfaces of my pots, applying them directly to the raw clay. For colour, these slips contain a range of oxides and carbonates. After the first firing, I then add several layers of different glazes, which carry ingredients for texture. These are mostly painted on by hand to create difference and direction, and to allow the combination of natural components to move and settle in new ways during the second firing at 1250 degrees centigrade.
My new work is inspired by the subtlety of form and service to function I see in Danish hand-thrown and cast ceramics. I am aiming to create everyday objects to be enjoyed that have an immediate simplicity but that are also found to be complex in their individuality and surface texture. I work in porcelain and most of my ceramic work is hand-thrown.
I make my own glazes, sometimes adapting recipes from others and sometimes starting from scratch. Pieces are fired twice at up to 1245 degrees centigrade. The blue-green glaze is a mix of potash feldspar, quartz, dolomite, talc and copper carbonate, while the stone-white glaze contains nepheline syenite, dolomite, quartz and china clay.
Rachel trained at the Bath Academy of Art and Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, London.
Having begun her career in art and ceramics, a period of independent study of ancient South American pottery traditions drew her towards languages and travel. She studied German and Portuguese at university and became a journalist, writing about business and finance in Europe and the United States.
When she had children, she moved back to the UK and worked as a freelance writer, and for a time, as a secondary school languages teacher.
It was during this phase that she returned to ceramics and set up her own studio. She lives and works in Bath. She has recently starting making work inspired by the warm colours and rich history of Sicily's majolica ware and to honour the memory of her late husband who was a skilled Sicilian ceramicist .
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