The potter Anne Mette Hjortshøj is emblematic of this revival. Working from her farm-based studio on Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, Hjortshøj processes a rich variety of clays herself, sourced from the coastline. She uses these to create tactile tableware: from bottle-vases to bowls, the palette of each piece echoes the land from which it came – subtle grey-greens recall wintry woodlands; off-whites are reminiscent of trodden snow. Until recently, the island was home to a thriving ceramics industry, thanks to its abundance of clays. ‘Within 10 kilometres from where I live you can find everything: low-firing clays, high firing clays, different colour clays, rocks for making glazes,’ she says. This remarkable bounty is the focus of the Bornholm Wild Clay Research Project, made up of Hjortshøj and a handful of fellow potters working between the Danish isle and Mashiko, Japan – another corner of the world where wild clay has long been part of everyday life.
To harvest her materials, the potter first seeks permission from the relevant landowner, before she and her husband take a small boat along Bornholm’s coast. Here, they travel along an ever-changing cliff face of layered clays, eroded by the crashing waves by up to half a metre a year. After filling the boat with their finds, she returns to her workshop, where she lays out the clay to dry in the sun (‘It’s a summer job’). She then breaks it down into powder, mixes it with water and leaves it to soak for a week, before passing it through industrial-sized sieves. Finally, she lays the clay out on an absorbent surface to dry a little before storage. ‘It’s very time consuming to do it yourself. But it’s not so difficult to clean it up and make something from it,’ she says. Having a gallerist take care of the commercial side of her business – her pots are sold exclusively through Goldmark Gallery – means she has time to work in this slow way, which has become intrinsic to her aesthetic. ‘The more you work with local clays, the less you can go back. The variety of clay I use has become a big part of the identity of my pots.’ Hjortshøj has stockpiled eight stoneware and two earthenware clays, which she mixes into blends suited to different parts of her wood-fired kiln. Acting as a foil to her slips and glazes, these clays create surfaces with depth and richness.