Standard Ware: making, learning, and finding the edges

In January 2020, we began work on prototypes for a range of Standard Ware pottery. The intention was to develop a small collection of functional pots for everyday use - pieces that could sit alongside the rhythm of studio life rather than compete with it.

At that point, we were already thinking about sustainability in broader terms. Teaching and learning have always sat at the centre of Sunken Studio, and we were beginning to explore what it might mean to support longer-term development - including the possibility of sustaining apprenticeships or extended training within the studio. Production felt like one possible way of creating continuity: a way to keep skills active, fill quieter periods between workshops, and support learning through making at volume.

Standard Ware was developed collaboratively, but much of the day-to-day making sat with Chris, working steadily through forms and processes, with guidance and conversation between us shaping decisions as they emerged. My role at that time was increasingly behind the scenes - trying to hold the wider shape of the business - while Chris focused on the practical reality of bringing the work into being. That division of attention became more pronounced as circumstances shifted.

By March, studio life changed abruptly. Teaching paused, and the need to find ways to keep the studio active accelerated. Production moved from being one strand of exploration to something more central, filling the gaps left by workshops and courses. We worked with the materials we had to hand, adapting plans as needed. The first batch of pots was made in white earthenware clay, glazed with a glossy transparent finish in a limited palette of yellow, pink, and blue. Constraints brought clarity. Decisions had to be made carefully, and those limitations focused the work.

Colour was an ongoing conversation. Chris approached it from a technical standpoint - testing, refining, understanding how materials behaved. I came at it more contextually, asking where colour comes from, and why it feels right in a particular moment. I kept returning to a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam some years earlier, originally to see flower pyramids, but lingering because of the paintings - particularly Vermeer. His attention to surface, light, and domestic interiors stayed with me.

That influence took time to settle. Looking back, it makes sense that it surfaced then. There was something resonant about domesticity — interiors, stillness, people spending time at home, quietly observing themselves and their surroundings. Referencing genre painting in everyday pots felt appropriate. Painters and potters share an interest in the ordinary: objects made to be lived with, not set apart.

The Standard Ware pots were made by hand, using simple forming processes. Each one was slightly different. They were unfussy, practical, and designed to fit around studio life. Making them together mattered. It offered a way to stay connected to material, and to each other, during a period of uncertainty.

At the same time, producing and teaching side by side never sat entirely comfortably. Marketing learning and products together proved difficult, and over time it became clearer that the studio’s strength lay in one area more than the other. Letting go of production took longer than expected, partly because it mattered to show - to ourselves as much as anyone else - that we could do it. That we had the skills, experience, and care to produce as well as teach.

Standard Ware sits now as part of that learning. Not a misstep, but a serious attempt to test what was possible, and to understand where the edges of the studio really were. It helped clarify how teaching, making, and sustainability intersect - and where they begin to pull in different directions.