Potter In The Wild: Elliot Swanson – Ground To Kitchen

Whenever starting something new it all starts with a bit of love, cause you have to be passionate enough to take it on otherwise what’s the point?

I always knew I wanted to be an artist and working with my hands is something I have always felt confident and comfortable with and knew that it would lead me to my career!
I feel so lucky to have made a career blending my two greatest passions, pottery, and cooking. I have a home-based shop front and online store, and I’m now making pieces I am very passionate about. I think my ceramics really complement the food I love to cook. I aim to inspire people to cook delicious food and plate their meals on the pottery I create. Alongside my tableware, I tend to gravitate toward creating more functional kitchenware, such as pouring bowls, fermenting pots, and mixing bowls. I use earthy iron tones with some neutral tones to supply a variety that can match most people’s kitchens.

To me gardening is a stress release and has been in my family for a long time. My dad is a landscape architect and helped him aroundthe garden when I was a kid, then when I got older and started cooking full time having fresh fruit and veg was just something I wanted to have around the house. The taste you get from something home grown is unreal!
 
 Whenever starting something new it all starts with a bit of love, cause you have to be passionate enough to take it on otherwise what’s the point?

I have been cooking for a bit over 10 years now. I fell in love with pottery through food, and after visiting Japan, I was mesmerized by their ceramics and the culture they have surrounding pottery and food. This made me want to dive even more into exploring the world of ceramics. 

 I have loved doing a lot of different things but never really settled on one set path. It first started with food, helping my parents out in the kitchen, and preparing dinners and snacks after school. I eventually ended up working in kitchens, learning the ways of the hospitality industry and expanding my knowledge about food and cooking, in particular falling in love with Asian and Mexican cooking.

In my first year of doing pottery, I worked in my parent’s shed after work as a way to relax after a busy day in the kitchen on an old wheel that I found in an op shop for $100, which I still use today 5 years later. I really didn’t know anything about pottery i just started throwing, making bowl shapes. I really thought had it down, how wrong I was! I kept finding myself running into endless errors. My centering was always off, plates were cracking through the drying stage, and I didn’t even know anything about firing or glazing. I even tried to glaze my pots before bisque-firing them first, which, of course, resulted in the pots cracking.

However, through all of these trials and errors, and there were a lot of them, I never gave up and kept pushing myself to make better pots and to learn more.

I met Lisa, who is now my lovely wife. She also had an interest in pottery, and at the time we met, she was getting pottery lessons from a potter named Renton Bishopric up in Coolum.

Renton is the founder of the ceramic keep cup business “Pottery for the Planet.” Lisa knew I wanted to learn more about pottery, and I was ready for a change from working in kitchens, so she sent him a message asking if he was looking for a potter, and he invited me to come in for an interview.

It was very outside of my comfort zone going into a new career, not knowing nearly enough and the fear of being laughed at for making mistakes.

I fell in love with reduction firing and the beautiful glazes you can achieve with this technique. Renton gave me an old electric kiln called the “dilly” that had been hidden away, sitting under a tarp at the studio for years. Old and rusted I excitedly took it home, set it up, and, to my surprise it worked! It was very small, but I now had my very own kiln, and I could bisque my work from home.

 I started working on creating my own glazes and using natural materials like wood ash. I discovered the potter Phill Rodgers and started looking into his ash glazes, which inspired me greatly. I have also found inspiration from other potters such as Mike Dodd, Richard Batterham, and Korean onggi potter Lee Kang-hyo. Lee Kang-hyo uses slips and natural glazes and just lets the pots naturally speak for themselves, which I believe is what it means to be a potter. 

One of the biggest aspects of the craft is figuring out what kind of potter you want to be and what exactly you want to create!

Recipe

This is a dish that Elliot fell in love with and often ate while traveling in Japan. Mirin is a rice wine kind of like sake but sweeter and little more tangy with less alcohol content. The noodles that i buy come in serving sizes already but usually 120-180grams per serve and cooked in boiling salted water