For the last one hundred years BC’s ceramics community has benefitted from the knowledge and skills that have been brought here by immigrants from around the world. The NorthWest Ceramics Foundations’ latest speaker, Russell Hackney, is the third generation potter in his family to live and work in the five (arguably six) towns of Stoke-on-Trent.
Born in Stoke-on-Trent, England, Russell Hackney comes from a long line of Master Ceramists. Joining the family business at 16, Hackney learned to model shapes and embossment designs for a variety of clients, including modelling a replica 19th Century clock that was presented to the Queen. In 2002, Hackney immigrated to Canada and opened his studio in Vancouver, Russell Hackney Ceramics, where he produces a signature collection of ceramics, personal works, custom designs and provides mould-making services.
In his talk, Making in the History, the artist will discuss the area of Stoke-on-Trent and his family history of three generations working in ceramics. Hackney will discuss the role of moulds in the making of ceramics both in terms of Industry and for the individual maker. In a wide-ranging talk he will also place in context the coexistence of minimalism and the decorative in his own work.
This was our first in-person talk in 2 1/2 years and it was good to welcome a group of enthusiastic ceramics friends for Russell’s well-prepared and interesting presentation at Burnaby’s Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Four of us car-pooled from the Tri-Cities and most others travelled east from Vancouver.
Russell gave us a little history lesson about Stoke-on-Trent, an area of five towns within eight square miles of fine clay. He showed photos of the characteristic bottle kilns, built of locally-made brick which were fired with coal and employed thousands since the 1750s. The Clean Air Act of 1956 meant the end of firing in bottle kilns. The area still provides work and study opportunities for many but not in the numbers of the past.
Russell’s father owned and operated Brunswick Ceramic Services and Russell started his career working there. His skill as a sculptor can be seen in these photographs of the work he did, replicating the figures for an ornate clock. It was a presentation piece to commemorate 200 years of making at the Dudson factory.
After some years of working in the family business, with a break to attend university, he decided to make his home here, in Canada in 2002. For the last twelve years he and his wife and dog have lived on Bowen Island, a short ferry ride from Vancouver. He maintains studios on Bowen and in the Mergatroid Building, in East Vancouver.
Russell is adamantly not a wheel-throwing potter, he tells us. His passion is design, art ideas…moulds are a ‘means to an end’.
He makes custom moulds but does not produce the clay items from them for customers. He tells us that he’s incredibly busy working for artists and industry, but does have his own line of quiet functional pieces so he can be considered a potter.
His pots are made with a cone 6 porcelain slip. The forms are not thrown on a wheel but created from plaster that he shapes on a lathe. He is particularly iterested in embossment, the raised designs that he carves into the plaster mould.
When asked whether wheel-throwing is something he might do, he says No. For colour he sometimes uses coloured clay slip and says that he has used glazes in the past and may in the future. As for different directions to take, he made tall clay forms, enhanced with subtle colour and barely seen text, for a show on Bowen Island.
https://www.gillianmcmillan.com/blog/2019/08/20/king-edward-bay/
I was lucky enough to see that four-person show on Bowen Island, in the Summer of 2019 and took this photo. Judging from the similarity of profiles on these forms I suspect that yes, Russell did not use a wheel, but made a plaster mould. This link is the second of two blogs relating to the Raiders’ show on Bowen that year, where I mention the show at Bowen Arts Council’s Gallery.
Alan and I have fond memories of visits to Stoke-on-Trent, to the Hanley, Gladstone and Dudson Museums, and the Wedgewood and Spode factories (or pot-banks as Russell tells us they’re called there). Thank you Russell for a very informative return visit to Stoke, and a fascinating look at your life here in BC. Your work is a further contribution to the production of ceramics in this province, even if you are not actually using a wheel.
He has the kind of life I fantasize about. And so interesting that he creates his molded pieces from plaster. I remember making plaster molds at Emily Carr and it was very tricky. I trashed most of my pieces. His are lovely.
I remember you and Georgina struggling with mould-making. It is tricky but Russell is an expert.