Behind the Portrait: Claire Henry
Continuing in our collaborative series with Simon Murphy, we spoke to Claire Henry, a potter who lives in Govanhill, about her life and work.
Claire Henry | Photo by Simon Murphy
by Rhiannon Davies
Claire is originally from Canada. After studying ceramics in Vancouver, she lived in Hungary, South Korea and New Zealand before moving to Scotland in 2013. You may have seen her gorgeous speckled stoneware mugs and tumblers in the likes of Short Long Black and Patricia’s cafe, establishments opened by her Govanhill-born partner.
All her pieces are made by hand in a small-batch studio meaning that they’re all unique. She frequently uses shades of oatmeal, blues and sea green, which complement the speckled clay, flecked with iron. Since her wholesale work supplying tableware to cafes and restaurants took a back burner during the pandemic, she has been doing online launches through her website: www.clairehenryceramics.com
I grew up in Edmonton. It is the most liberal pocket of Alberta, which is like the Texas of Canada. It’s a very conservative province with lots of oil. It’s really green in the summer, but then really cold in the winter.
It was only when I moved, I realised it’s not normal for your eyelashes to freeze together. But there was really sparkly snow and bright blue skies in the winter.
I had a wonderful art teacher in high school. He would give me the keys to the pottery studio. So that’s where I first started. He was really great at encouraging my interests, helping me to dive into art history.
At university, there was a big divide between art and crafts. Pottery was seen more as a craft. I had to defend my love of throwing pots and making mugs. They couldn’t just be functional. There had to be more of a concept behind it.
I did a six-month artist residency in a small town in Hungary. It was wonderful and full on, being in Eastern Europe working with these amazing potters and artists. Soviet architecture and art deco really influenced my work at the time.
Clay offers you discipline but so much freedom of expression. It is so forgiving and malleable, but you can’t push it. It controls your schedule.
Read more: Behind the Portrait - Daniel Radu
I think I could study and practice this all my life. I’d still only have a drop of knowledge. Every month there’s something new I want to do. I could never be bored just working with this one material.
It has such a personal imprint because you’re making it with your hands. I love that romantic notion that you can see a shard of pottery from thousands of years ago and still see the thumbprint of the maker in it.
It’s so wonderful to see people fall in love with the material . You get results right away, but there’s such a learning curve and so much to discover.
Where I live really influences the work I make. For Scotland, it’s all about the shades – blues, greens, greys. There are rustic tones in nature, or in these beautiful sandstone tenements.
There’s a growing group of potters in and around Govanhill. We’re all working with the same material and the same constraints, but our work is all so different. There’s space for everybody.
The community in Govanhill and the Southside is so vibrant. It’s such a hub for creative people. There are all these independent businesses, community spaces, and an abundance of artists, collectives, retail shops – interesting integration of different types. It’s a great place to be.
I’m interested in looking for wild clay that you find in nature. Scotland has so much of that. It would be a really fun thing to explore. It wouldn’t be sustainable to make all of my production ware out of it, but a few one-off pieces.
I love that clay is always teaching me something. But there’s an unpredictability with it which can be frustrating. If you lose a whole kiln load of mugs, you never make that same mistake again.
This portrait forms part of Simon Murphy’s Govanhill series. Follow @smurph77 for more. This article first appeared in Issue 5 of the magazine which you can buy through the link at the top of this article.