The craftsman’s passion
Joseph Bull Studio was began because of a dream I had of an elderly potter which lived in my childhood home vilalge and quickly became a pursuit, a love and passion for story telling which this craft offers.
Almost a decade ago I began my journey in ceramics and the collecting of single specie trees which I then turn into ash glazes. I studied and explored ancient traditions and techniques, working with some of the world’s leading contemporary ceramicists and institutions. I was driven simply by pure passion, not knowing where it would lead me.
Currently I am working alongside Dr. Robin Wilson of Keble College, Oxford University at the Oxford Anagama Kilns project assisting and leading wood firings as well as running my own private practise in my workshop in Wotton-by-Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
The resulting studio and its work is the current manifestation of my ongoing journey into ceramics and crafts. It will always be evolving, learning, and with love and reverence for this timeless craft.
2024 I shall build a salt fired kiln at my workshop which will enable me to take advantage of the salting process to develop my work and to offer the studio a diverse and potentially inexhaustible approach to decorating the form.
My real passion lies in the ecology and mineralogy of our planet. I obtain single species of trees which I process to obtain the mineral composition of trees in the form of wood ash. Within the wood ash lies the metals which I use as the colorants for my glazes, avoiding mined minerals so to organically produce colour by manipulating prisms and refracting light,
The other side of my work is the exploitation of a firing process by using wood kilns, which produces a purely spontaneous aesthetic onto unglazed clay forms which are in the kiln.
All my ceramics are hand made using the potters wheel and manipulated post throwing.