Q: What inspires you in your work?
Everything! but predominantly the natural world. I love birds, insects, trees, leaves, all of it. I am also inspired by mythology, magic and fairytales, but ultimately, I just want to make nice things! I have hundreds of sketches of ideas of things to make ‘one day’ Hopefully that day will be soon as I’m having a custom built workshop put up in the garden, so the extra space will mean I can work on more than one project at a time.
Q: Can you tell a bit about the work involved in making beads. Does that vary greatly depending on the kind of ceramic you work with?
The start of a bead is always the same, a bag of mud. There are slight variations on how you can work with the different clays, some are more plastic than others, some need to be worked at different stages, but the process is the same. The raw clay is formed, left to dry for a couple of days and then goes through a bisque firing. This is so that the clay becomes hard, but is still porous so that you can paint the glaze on and it will bond properly during the glaze fire. The glaze firing is where the clay is fired up to full temperature and the finished piece will be strong, waterproof and coloured. Overall the process takes about a week.
For Raku firing, beads are fired in a gas kiln and taken out at around 1000oC and dumped in to a bin of combustible material, that’s really good fun! But for stoneware and earthenware glazes, it’s the kiln that does all the work, it’s just a matter of how you set it up to run.
Q: You are designing beads, you write blog posts for your own blog and are a regular contributor to Art Jewelry Elements. I’m curious: what does a typical day in the life of Caroline Dewison looks like?
Manic! I drop the kids off and am home just after 9, then I try and work from my list of things I have to/want to do until they’re back at 3pm. I take things as they come usually, each day can be different. I don’t make beads every day, and I’m terrible at posting on my own blog, but I do as much as I can, when I can. I’m currently working on a desk in the dining room, so I’m restricted to how much I can have going on at any one time, but I have a dream that the new workshop will be organised with lots of projects in various stages, everything where I can find it and everything
working together in harmony… lol.