Shared Ground

Ian Payne's work is driven by experimentation with form and surface, and by the presence of wood grain revealed through the turning process. Flora Fabris works primarily with stoneware and plant-ash glazes, attentive to imperfection, natural variation, and the traces left by making and firing.

The collaboration grew from a simple, practical exchange during the craft festival in Bovey Tracey last year. Ian began saving the wood shavings produced in his turning practice, which Flora then burned and processed into ash for use in her ceramic glazes. From this material loop, a shared body of work has gradually begun to emerge.

Both practices are centred on making functional objects by hand, using processes that demand time, repetition, and restraint. While wood and clay are distinct materials, they share a long history of utilitarian use and a sensitivity to touch, weight, and balance. This collaboration is not about merging disciplines, but about placing them in conversation—allowing each material and process to retain its own integrity while acknowledging points of overlap.

The core idea of Shared Ground is the making of paired objects, or “twin pieces.” Each pair consists of a turned wooden form and a ceramic counterpart glazed using ash derived from the very wood used to make the wooden piece. One object carries the presence of the material in its original state; the other holds a transformed version of that same material, altered through fire and chemistry. The intention is not to create replicas, but related forms that speak quietly to one another—materially, visually, and conceptually.

The V-flared bowl was chosen as the starting point for the collaboration. This form is one of Ian’s signature shapes in his woodturning practice, and it is also deeply rooted in the history of pottery. Simple at first glance, the V-flared bowl demands precision and sensitivity in both crafts. In woodturning, the form requires careful control of wall thickness and a confident, continuous unsupported cut to achieve a clean flare without losing strength. In pottery, the same shape presents challenges in throwing, trimming, and firing, particularly in maintaining tension through the wall and rim while allowing for shrinkage and movement in the kiln.

Working with the same form in different materials makes the contrasts between the processes more visible. Wood responds immediately to the tool, but it does not come without uncertainty. In turning, imperfections in the material often only reveal themselves once the process has begun: a small knot or burr may emerge that enhances the story of the piece, while at other times a split or weakness appears that, while still part of the wood’s history, can detract from the aesthetic quality of the form. Navigating these moments becomes a balancing act, requiring the maker to work closely with the wood rather than against it. Clay, by contrast, resists, collapses, and remembers through the hand, while the firing process introduces an additional layer of uncertainty for the ceramic pieces. These differences are not smoothed over; instead, they are allowed to remain present within each pair.

The ash glazes used in the ceramic pieces are made from Ian’s wood shavings, which are burned, ashed, sieved, and carefully prepared before being incorporated into the glaze. Burning the wood shavings proved to be more complicated than it initially appeared. Due to their fine, airy nature, the shavings tend to smoulder rather than burn cleanly, often producing small residues of charcoal instead of usable ash. After several attempts, a workable method was developed: the shavings are placed into shallow metal trays and set onto an existing fire. Burning slowly within an already hot combustion chamber allows the material to combust more fully, producing a cleaner ash while preventing contamination from other wood species. This careful, species-specific preparation is essential to preserving the integrity of each glaze.

Ash is an inherently variable material: its composition shifts depending on the species of wood, the terroir the tree grew up on, the conditions of the burn, and the method of preparation. Rather than attempting to eliminate this variability, Flora works with it and develops glazes that are stable and functional while retaining subtle differences. In this context, the glaze becomes a quiet record of the wooden object’s material life, rather than a decorative surface.

Shared Ground is not driven by novelty or fusion for its own sake. It is an ongoing, open-ended enquiry into material relationships, craft traditions, and the quiet dialogue between objects. By placing wooden and ceramic pieces side by side, viewers are invited to slow down and consider how materials move through processes of use, transformation, and care, and how meaning can emerge from shared attention rather than spectacle.

The title Shared Ground reflects both the shared material origins of the work and the meeting point between two practices. It speaks to the literal ground — the ash, the clay, the wood — and to the conceptual space where different ways of making can coexist without hierarchy. While the collaboration continues to evolve, the title captures its underlying intention: to explore where practices align, diverge, and quietly inform one another.