Mairi Stone setting her ideas in ceramic creations

Aileen Lee interviews ceramicist Mairi Stone.

What’s your background?

I was born and raised on the south coast of the England. I left school at 16 years of age and worked for a local newspaper in the art department and thus began my career as a graphic artist. At the age of 19, two major things happened, I attended a night course at a pottery and fell in love with clay. I also began travelling and the next 15 years were spent in a round of working-saving-travelling and repeat. When I was 34, I had my daughter, Georgie, and not wanting to bring her up in the UK, my partner and I moved to West Cork in 2000.

My clay journey began on my kitchen table making jewellery and little animals from polymer clay. I live not far from Dunbeacon Pottery and owner Helen Ennis Helen Ennis allowed me to fire my first stoneware pieces in her kiln. My father bought me my very first hobby kiln which was a massive boon, and then with the help and financial assistance from both the West Cork Leader and Enterprise board I slowly built up to where I am today.

What’s a typical workday?

I don’t know that my days are typical, but I usually check over any online work over breakfast — answering emails, replying to comments on social media and the like. Then I go into the studio to get on with whatever I am working on at the time. After lunch will be more studio time or it could be packing orders, delivering stock, listing new pieces in my Etsy shop, keeping up with the accounts, and posting on social media. There’s so much more to do than just making! I will always be watching the weather and getting my little four-legged friend out at some stage of the day. I find that home and work life have melded together so I don’t have set hours. I will always aim for 30-40 hours work a week, but it’s often more.

Tell us about a recent project you have worked on?

I was commissioned by a local restaurant, Budds in Ballydehob to make a hanging illuminated piece (pendant lamp). It’s twice the size of my usual lamps (roughly 40cm x 17cm) and is definitely more the area I want to go into, larger more bespoke pieces, both for hanging and on bases.

What’s your design style?

I guess if I had to label it my work would be biomorphic/abstract.

What or who inspires you?

Nature in all its glory! The oceans and all they hold are quite obviously a major inspiration, but it is the whole of nature’s organic forms, textures and colours that influence me. I also have a great interest in the macro / microscopic world, seeing that which is hidden to the naked eye

What’s your favourite trend (if you have any)?

It’s a social one, that is seeing people moving away from materialism, consumerism and carnism and moving towards conservation, community and caring for our planet and all that lives on it.

What’s your most treasured possession?

My health.

Who is your favourite designer, or inspiration?

I am deeply moved by the artworks of German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, but I also find inspiring any artists (dead or alive) that have nature as their muse.

What would be a dream project for you to work on?

One that I hope to realise this winter! I make small illuminated pieces (lamps) and I want to work on some large-scale ones. Have you any design tips for us? I don’t know that it’s so much of a design tip as a life tip but when I was a teenager I read this quote somewhere and I have lived by it ever since: “Always take time to be quiet and listen to the voice within, follow the intuition that it gives you. Do what you love, and the rest will take care of itself.”

- www.mairistone.com