Jim Robison

Demonstration and Lecture

Sunday October 16th 2005

Jim Robison is fellow of the CPA and is well known for his large-scale ceramics, and his book of that title. His work adorns many buildings throughout the UK, not least the Grafton Centre in Cambridge. His humour and enthusiasm will be familiar to any of you who have attended the Aberystwyth Festival of Ceramics where he is the regular master of ceremonies. There is an excellent article about Jim Robison in our summer 2005 newsletter.

Review

Jim gave us a very lively and humorous talk and demonstration on Sunday 16th. He concentrated on slab building techniques, more so than on making numbers of pieces. He showed us how he layers clays and slip, texture and decoration as part of the slab rolling process. It was in some ways a magical mystery tour through his "useful things" drawers - from pieces of cloth to pastry cutters - showing how interesting effects can come from simple techniques or objects.

He did demonstrate how he makes his very large elliptically cross-sectioned vessels. There was one unfortunate but very funny moment when he peeled the newspaper away to reveal one decorated panel the right way up...and the other upside down. It just goes to show that it happens to the best!

If you want to learn more, Jim has a website: www.jimrobison.co.uk.

We also had a rather tomorrow's world section when Ray Auker demonstrated his prototype pneumatically controlled extruder. Jerry also unveiled a hand-pumped model that whilst requiring more force to operate was considerably simpler to set-up.