Creigiau Pottery. Circa By Jonathan Griffiths Apprentice potter. Jonathan at Efail Isaf Pottery

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1 Creigiau Pottery Circa By Jonathan Griffiths Apprentice potter Jonathan at Efail Isaf Pottery I approached Mr Reginald Southcliffe owner of Creigiau Pottery during the early part of 1976 to find out if there any jobs available at the Pottery and I was in luck as they were looking for an apprentice! As I had to finish my schooling first I started as a Saturday Boy until the end of June of that year and I cleaned-up the pottery by emptying bins and pugging clay ready for the late John Howe the main thrower to use during his working week. In the afternoons on these Saturdays I was given a chance to learn how to throw a pot and this training was initially done by Mr Southcliffe himself. After a few weeks I was able to make something like a pot and these tended to be small vases, small jugs and bowls which were finished and put on display in the shop, these were marked as apprentice pieces that were sold at a small price. One day my father was asked by a work colleague what I was getting up too work wise and he explained that I was starting work at the Pottery to which the reply was Oh I know the man who makes the seconds! Although this was said in fun it was to a point true, but soon I became quite proficient and was able to perform throwing sessions on Mervyn John Howe s wheel which was located in a viewing room on route to the entrance to the craft shop. This proved to be good experience for me and It would give me a bit of a buzz making pieces in front of many viewing public that would have their jaws drop when they saw the pot take shape, there would be tens of people watching me maybe hoping that a piece might collapse and fail just like on the BBC programme Generation Game where it was soon to become a favourite repeat

2 showing of comedy laughter at people having a go and proving it s not as easy as it looks without the training. Start of apprenticeship When I left Bryn Celynnog School at the end of June 1976 my apprenticeship started, and it took take me 3 years to complete. In this time I would hone my throwing skills and learn how to make up glazes, slips and many other aspects of ceramics. Eventually I was also taught how to pack the kilns, mainly taught to me by Reg Southcliffe, but I was still had the lads job as I was still the one who had to clean up the workshops and this could be very dusty at times! It was so bad that you could not see one end of the workshop to the other! This problem was always caused by a pottery term fettling which is a clean up process after the pot was dry. A knife was used to go around the pot and scrape off any minute lumps and sandpaper for rubbing the bases so they could lie flat on a surface. This process was later outlawed by factory Health & Safety Inspectors and a special booth was created much to the annoyance of Mr Southcliffe it also annoyed the workers too as it meant placing a pot under a booth at sitting height and the particles caught to stop them dropping on the floor. This was backbreaking work which was performed mainly by the female staff of seven. Two chores that were always my least favourite were the pugging of clay and the making of slip by using a blunger, both are means of recycling clay. The Pug mill was a machine that recycled the clay by pushing wet clay into a hopper, the clay was scrap clay used during the making of plates & bowls on a machine called a Jigger The great thing about the Pug mill was that for throwing pots on a potters wheel the clay had to bee free of any air pockets and also had to have the right amount of water in order to get it to work. To throw pots the clay preferred is a clay that is in its plastic state and that when it is in the process of being made on a potters wheel the clay is spiralled upwards to form the pots wall... If it s too dry you can get the preferred texture by using the pugmill to run the drier clay through with the addition of water, alternatively if the clay is too wet then you would run it through with drier clay. How this is achieved is a hopper for the feed of clay, it then gets pushed with an mechanical arm onto a worm screw within the pugmill that mixed the clay and pushed out like a sausage at the other end. This was a sometimes tedious and dirty job to do but my role at the time was to keep the main production thrower John Howe supplied with freshly pugged clay.he was such a good thrower that he would constantly run out and invariably have to chase me for some extra supply. The Blunger was a mixer that turned solid plastic & dry clay into slip! (liquid clay) This was good when pots that were broken before firing could be recycled. The slip was used to pour liquid slip into special moulds that could be of difficult shapes. At Creigiau we made lots of the lustred jugs this way so to were some tall coffee cups, the jugs had Welsh girls names called Bronwen, Myfanwy and Betti Jones. These were made in a special moulding shed used by Mair Morris and I remember she also used to have to chase me up for more supply of slip was a glorious summer and despite having a dislike to pugging and the blunging of clay I was having a great time at the pottery, I had my own list of production items to make in my own shed and own wheel, the most requested item of them being vases

3 that did not have to be of a constant shape one thing to remember is that to be a good thrower you have to make the same items of the same shape and dimension! This is the craft and the hardest thing to do and it took me a good year before I could honestly say that they were exactly the same. I was also taught how to set up the jigger machine for various vessels, so every now and then I would be called upon by some of the girls to set the machines up for the next production run. It was also something for me to be able to use and I remember a lady called Margaret Scard who showed me how to use the machine, it certainly was easier to use than the potters wheel. The jigger would make dinner plates, saucers, baskets side plates and goblets. Winters at The pottery When Winter arrived at the pottery it was a bleak place to be, as we only had electric heaters to keep us warm, it was great at the end of the day in each room but at the beginning of the day I would be in charge of unlocking each shed and switch on the electric fires in each area. A good place to be in the winter would always be where the kilns were located as they were constantly working and enjoyed being told to unload or reload a kiln! This was heaven on a cold day but the opposite could be said on a hot summers day. Creigiau Pottery did not have its own water supply either as it was out into the country well not strictly true it did have a supply from Hendrescythan House some Quarter of a mile from the pottery but Reg Southcliffe did not want to pay for any upkeep of the water supply, if ever it was to break down! Clean water for drinking was brought from Reg Southcliffe s house in Creigiau on a daily basis by car. The water for pottery production however was used from a blue water butt that used to collect from the roof of the building, a second water butt being used for cleaning throwing tools. In the summer I can remember seeing mosquito larvae forming in the foul smelling stale water that would sometimes difficult to retrive especially as it got nearer the bottom. In the winter I would have to break the ice to get to the water, I was told to place the cold water in metal cans close to the electric fires just to get the temperature up before I could start throwing numb hands do not make good pots! Sometimes I would steal some from the geeser that was used with fresh water to make our tea, if of course no one was looking, but this would be frowned upon by the staff as there would only be the one supply of fresh water per day.but the girls did take a bit of sympathy on me now and again when my hands were blue with cold. There was no sanitary system at the pottery either, all we had were small sheds out in the woods made of tin sheeting and the toilets used were portable camping toilets, the guys could put up with this... but the girls who had their own loo found it I am sure a lot harder to put up with. I for sure was very pleased that I was not requested to empty them at all during my days at the pottery. The clay used at Creigiau during my time was red earthenware which is one of the best clays to work with, but in order to get the famous Copper Lustre one had to have a dark brown base to achieve the copper effect. Basically if you fire red earthenware to a temperature of 1000 C you achieve a terracotta biscuit so when you apply a clear glaze and take it to a temperature of 1100 C the glaze appears as dark brown but of course this is the colour of the clay underneath. To get the coloured slip inside the pottery vessels we used to make coloured slips using a white clay with coloured oxides the most common at Creigiau Pottery being the royal blue. The technique is to line the pots when they were wet, to do this you fill the pot with the coloured slip and

4 then pour it out again, wipe the rim and place on a flat piece of sponge. When fired it appears two tone. The glazed pots were then taken to a special shed and the the copper lustre applied by painting on each item by hand. Reg Southcliffe made out that the lustre was a secret recipe but to be truthful it was always bought in bottles from Stoke at the then price of 300 per bottle.not something you would want to drop! It was expensive then as still it is today. Sue Boulton was the girl who painted many thousands of pieces then and was also a talented artist. Sue & Margaret would also place the flowered transfers on the plates for anniversaries, birthdays etc. Some white plates were bought in from a wholesaler in Cardiff which had originated from Stoke on Trent. I remember having to go with Mr Southcliffe and collect them by the thousand in his Austin 1100 estate car. The Lustre was fired to a temperature of 700 C and made a total mess of the dedicated kiln, it also had a very pungent smell but not unpleasant this was the oils in the lustre being burned off. When the lustre kiln had finished the pots were polished up using a brass/copper polish and I remember on many occasions this being conducted outside in the summer. Another glaze used at Creigiau was the oatmeal which was a grey glaze that could finish as a flat grey colour or a beautiful grey with brown flecks that was the iron content in the clay and glaze, where the glaze was thicker it would be an opaque buff, but where it was thinner especially on the rims it would be a dark brown. I always remember it being a happy place to work, despite its failings for hot water and decent toilets, many times the electrics would fail at the pottery due to the over use of electric fires and machinery. It was during one of these failings that I met Bob Pemberthy who played rugby for Pontypridd as a lock he was amazingly tall and had to duck under the cables that was the electric supply to each shed. He was none too impressed with the toilets either referring to them as Thunder boxes.

5 Freshly hand thrown Vinegar and oil bottles that John Howe had made in In the top left corner were some of his special pieces with his unique leaf press and flowers. Mervyn John Howe making a mustard pot around 1978.