A deep respect for the past is evident in the London home and Welsh cottage of potter Steve Harrison

Steve makes all of his pots in London, in a studio in his back garden, and then fires them in his cottage in Wales. To the untrained eye, the London studio looks like a Georgian beauty but its story is much more telling of Steve’s nature, as he built the entire studio himself. He began in 1995 by creating ‘a pebble-dash box’. In 2007, inspired by Gustave Courbet’s Pavilion of Realism – a makeshift exhibition space the painter built in Paris in 1855 as a protest against the art establishment – he converted his workshop for his 20-year retrospective: ‘I clad the front in timber to look like a Georgian stone façade.’

Japanese fans of his pottery often travel to meet Steve and to see his impressive workshop. Every visitor is given an English tea ceremony, with loose leaf tea brewed in one of Steve’s pots, served in one of his mugs and enjoyed with a slice of Julia’s homemade Victoria sponge. ‘They get a great insight into how I live my life, because they have to come through the house to get to the workshop,’ explains Steve.‘You must just be yourself: you can’t be that finicky with people coming through.’

It is an amusing statement from a man who has gone to great lengths to hide every sign of modern life in his kitchen – the only obvious exception being a plug socket, though he wishes he could get rid of that, too. ‘This is somewhere I can observe my pots in constant use,’ Steve reasons. ‘I don’t want the distraction of a washing machine and so on – I want it to be as rudimentary as possible.’ Rudimentary it may be, but it is beautiful, too, with cupboards made by carpenter Ben Casson, the son of Mick and a longtime friend and collaborator of Steve’s. Cutlery lives in old library drawers, the cooker has a splashback made by Steve and there are ceramic sunflowers – a 2015 addition – covering two of the cabinets.

Life in the couple’s cottage in Wales – where Steve has his kiln – is even more basic. There is no mains water, a phone signal is unheard of and if Steve could persuade Julia to do away with electricity, there would be none of that either. It is like stepping back in time, with the loo – and a shower for modern comfort – in an outhouse built by Steve, and a copper bath on the landing upstairs. ‘It has reached a level of perfection for me in a very rustic way,’ says Steve. ‘It’s the antithesis of my life in Enfield and a kind of life that doesn’t exist any more.’ It took Steve 23 years to alter the cottage to his liking, all in four-day bursts while waiting for the kiln to heat or cool.

The cottage is special for many reasons, but most of all because it is where Steve sees his work come to fruition. For a man who is such a ball of energy, it is remarkable to witness his stillness as he unpacks his kiln and sees his pieces for the first time. The pots are stacked on different tables to signify which are to be kept, which are to be sold and which he considers a failure. The ones he keeps are sequestered away in the loft and, Steve believes, ‘No money is enough for the loft pots.’

A recent unveiling of his collection, which was shown at Blue Mountain School in Shoreditch, had a profound effect: ‘I had this feeling that if I died now, my work is done. It was lovely, because I’m more aware of how I am as a maker – I wasn’t aware of that before because I was still on the journey.’ It caused a change in direction for Steve, who previously obsessed over each individual item. Now, with a body of work behind him, he is deciding which way to ‘set the sail’. As he explains, ‘Maybe I want to just explore one shape and have a kiln with no variety in it. I like the devotion to the one thing; it moves to more of the artistic pursuit.’

He has since worked on an exhibition titled The Age of the Beaker, celebrating the conclusion of a two-year collaboration with the food writer and cook Nigel Slater. A short film by Jack McGoldrick documents the autotelic approach adopted by Steve and Nigel, and was shown at the event at Blue Mountain School. This follows an exhibition at Covent Garden stationery shop Choosing Keeping in September 2020 – Steve is a long-standing collaborator with its founder Julia Jeuvell – for which he created a collection of stoneware stationery items, and worked with Ben Casson on a yew desk and chair with ceramic accents.

‘I still love pots in the same way I did at school,’ Steve says, which is evident if you spend any time with him. It is not just the finished product, of course, but the getting there, and a love of the raw material and its unique way of being formed. ‘I just love the processes, the ritual,’ muses Steve, adding, ‘There are a lot of menial tasks involved in making ceramics, because clay is so dirty to work with, and it keeps you grounded in all areas of your life.’

Steve Harrison: steveharrison.co.uk | @steve_harrison_pots
Ben Casson: kitchenwood.co.uk
Choosing Keeping: choosingkeeping.com