Rob Sollis is everything you would hope for in a potter, the definitive Romantic figure of contemporary craft. He is a strongly built man, appropriate to the intensely physical job of throwing clay on a wheel, and he occupies an idyllic Devon studio for part of the year, then his farmhouse in Portugal for the remaining months, where he harvests and presses olives in relative isolation. So far so fine-art storybook.
All this would be nothing, though, if his work didn’t meet the same expectations, but when Rob welcomes me to his studio, I see that it does. On the shelves are numerous air-drying, bisque-fired and finished works that show his skill in throwing, surfacing and glazing clay. Some are small tableware pieces, like his tiny ‘salt pinchers’, and some are large sculptural vessels. Each object has the precision of form you would expect from a production potter, but with the aesthetic clarity of a studio ceramicist.
As we sip coffee from mugs Rob threw himself, he suggests I try throwing, but I know, and he knows, that he might as well ask me to walk on water: it is a skill that takes years to perfect.
It takes decades to accumulate the skill, strength and material knowledge of a Master Potter, and it is a road beset with failure and frustration thanks to the volatile nature of clay at extreme temperatures. There are costly kiln losses, physical injuries, and glaze alchemy disasters to contend with in pursuit of the perfect pot; but there it is, sitting inconspicuously in Rob’s studio, the perfect pot. It is a closed form that is both vessel and art object, a tactile and deliciously tempting thing that Rob has thrown, hammered, glazed, fired, painted and sanded into a unique and beautifully quiet art object.
Holding it is even more thrilling than looking at it, and it inspires in me the reverence I attach to seriously good ceramic works. Its form and finish contain Rob’s story to this point, his training at Dartington, his years in Norway as a freelance production thrower, the development of his practice over 40 years, and on its base is that all important maker’s mark.
Before I leave, Rob tips out a tin of maker’s stamps that he has used over the years. They chart his career from apprentice to independent potter through a series of adjusted marks beginning with SR - his first childhood stamp created the wrong way round - to the fish of Fishacre Pottery in Totnes, to the full length ‘Rob Sollis’ of his current work. There is also a W created for a particularly bad year. He tells me what W stood for, but I can’t repeat it in print. If you want to know, go down to The Old Blacksmith's Linney studio in Combeinteignhead and ask him.
robsollisceramics.co.uk
