Jim Malone has been making high fired stoneware pottery since the early seventies and also makes some porcelain. He works alone producing a wide range of individual pottery forms. One of Britain's foremost potters, he has exhibited widely in this country as well as in America, Germany and Hong Kong. He is included on the British Crafts Council index of selected craftsmen and is a Fellow of the Craftsman Potters Association of Great Britain.
Malone’s work is all thrown on a traditional Korean type wheel, Jim works on a light oriental type kick wheel which demands sensitivity in use but, in return, allows a more intimate, expressive contact with the material. The clay is coaxed and, somewhere within the wheel’s silent, hypnotic rhythm, his pots are ” born”. They are then fired in the oil and wood burning oriental climbing kiln, which takes 20 hours to reach the required temperature throughout (1350 degrees centigrade in the hottest part of the kiln down to about 1280 deg.C). Constant stoking is required for much of this time. Of the kiln Jim says, “It is an idiosyncratic beast but I have come to see it as a partner and have grown used to its vagaries, hot and cool spots and variations in atmosphere, and am able to make creative use of them.”
Jim’s glazes are made up from, granites, wood ashes, clays and silts which are gathered from the surrounding area in Cumbria and processed at the pottery. These unrefined materials have greater character than their industrial counterparts, although some materials that are not available any other way have to be bought. By creating in this way, the pots are a true expression of the place in which they are made, indigenous and unique.
“I left the hot house of London, where I had been a student in the late nineteen seventies, and set up a workshop. It was initially in North Wales and later in Cumbria. I work within sight of the Cumbrian Fells. This involves a necessary slower pace of life, in touch with essential values, from which pots can grow, naturally and unenforced. They are free from the superficiality of urban demands. My work is a reflection of my life and my concerns to understand and communicate beauty, as I see it, through pottery form.“
