Nancy Fuller 'Water Spirit Box'

Dimensions - H 9.5cm x W 10.5cm x Ø 10.5cm

Materials - Wood fired stoneware blend. Finnish wild clay slips, natural ash glaze and white gold leaf.

Method - Hand-built, anagama-fired three times for 4 days and 3 nights

Care - Dust lightly with a cloth

Description

This small lidded box is small hand-built, crafted from a wood-fired stoneware blend, layered with Finnish wild clay slips and finished in a natural ash glaze with white gold leaf.

Anagama-fired three times over four days and three nights, it carries the depth and unpredictability of prolonged flame. The softly curved form feels intimate in scale, with an irregular surface where white gold leaf catches the light and breaks subtly across the clay beneath. Fine darker lines emerge through the surface, revealing the movement and tension of the firing process.

The result is a quiet, elemental object, part vessel, part relic, where earth, fire, and precious surface detail come together in a restrained, atmospheric form.

About the Artist 

Nancy Fuller is Taiwanese by birth and raised in Scotland. After training as a printmaker, she discovered wood-fired ceramics when she returned to Taiwan in 2000 to study Chinese Mandarin.

All of Nancy's pots are fired in her anagama which she was able to design and build herself through the financial support of the Scottish Arts Council. The ancient forms of the Japanese tsubo and kame continue to inspire her, not only visually but also physically. The spatial awareness of the pots that comes through making, carrying and firing them gives them an almost human dimension. Coiling gives softer outlines, which change further during the firing process, helping her achieve the natural quality she's looking for. The clay is the starting point for all her work, and through her choice of raw materials combined with her firing technique, she has developed her own wood-fired aesthetic.