🎧 Linda Southwell: Immortal and Impactful Flora Tim Saunders

Appears in the April 2025 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

Global warming is causing plants to flower earlier than they were hundreds of years ago, according to the Natural History Museum, and scientists have warned that plants are at unprecedented risk. In a bid to showcase the plants that have learned to adapt and survive in harsh conditions, Linda Southwell immortalizes them in porcelain. An avid gardener, she finds herself “most intrigued by these plants or those that are not stereotypically beautiful, such as aeoniums (subtropical flora).” 

Since 2019 when she exhibited Ghosts in the Graveyard, a large installation of porcelain flower sculptures at Renishaw Hall and Gardens in Derbyshire, England, climate change has been an ongoing message in her work. Home to the national yucca collection, the work was installed amongst the perennial shrubs. “Ghosts in the Graveyard was inspired by the terrible forest fires in Australia, and I was fascinated by how yuccas can regenerate after such wildfires.” Yucca leaves are thick with waxy skins to prevent water loss through evaporation and are sometimes slightly curved, enabling them to direct rainwater and dew down to their roots. Yucca plants also have thick taproots that can store water during dry times. This means that yuccas are capable of blooming amid scorched trees and vegetation. “The white porcelain sculptures were a ghostly warning of the dangers of climate change,” says Southwell, who now plans to build on the installation work that she did with Ghosts in the Graveyard. “I want to make a body of work that conveys my passion for the natural world,” she enthuses. “I am particularly interested in kinetic sculpture, the sounds that porcelain can make, and how that can be incorporated in a sensory experience for the observer.”

The scale of her work varies from one-off small single flowers to large-scale installations.

Clay gives Southwell, whose lamps appeared as example pieces on season six of The Great Pottery Throw Down on Channel 4 (in the UK), a heightened sense of respect for her hands. “I have an instinctual handling of material that I sometimes take for granted, which has come about through hundreds of hours of repetition.” 

It wasn’t until Southwell left university that she became aware of craft pottery although she had used clay sculpturally on her English and art degree course to create large heads that were then cast in Ciment Fondu (a specialty calcium aluminate cement). “We didn’t have any ceramics in the home I grew up in and I wasn’t really aware of it as an art form until I left university.” 

In 1997, when she was working in “boring administrative jobs” Southwell decided to attend a pottery evening class. Suddenly, clay grabbed her attention. “I think from that point I knew that I had found something that really resonated with me. I had been looking for a creative outlet and the pottery classes were perfect.” After finishing the ten-week evening class course, she found Oxpots, a community-run studio in East Oxford and she went to a class there every Thursday evening for around five years. 

Before making a piece, she will embark on loose sketches in pencil, drawing from her memory, showing what she intends to make. Southwell, whose studio is a repurposed shipping container, will work at these until she is “fairly confident of the direction” she wants to work in. “The sketches are very messy! I don’t usually work from photographs or primary observation, preferring to rely on my memory.” 

Working mainly in porcelain because she loves the quality of it after firing, this material is much stronger than stoneware clay “and it has such a refined grace about it.” The porcelain is grogged, which Southwell finds easier for handbuilding, “and it also gives the clay a nice textured fleck once the stain has been added.” 

Southwell’s sculptures are made slowly from hundreds of repetitively formed elements. The porcelain is pushed to its limit so that the impression of fragility is belied by the strength of the material after it has been transformed by intense heat. 

Lately, she has been creating the base shape of her sculptures using thrown pieces joined together. “My older work began with a large, coiled shape that was internally supported with clay walls to prevent it from collapsing. I make pinch-pot balls as the base for the flowers and make petals individually, starting in the middle and working out. The larger outer petals sometimes have to dry for an hour or two to firm up before they can be attached.” 

Her work features “a fairly limited color palette” so that all of it sits well together at an exhibition. “I will mix up the colored clay using stains in quite large quantities so that I know I’ll have enough.” In the past she has made her own glazes but now predominantly colors clay bodies with stains and oxides so that the raw beauty of the clay is visible. 

Working with clay has taught her patience and resilience. “It’s a very humbling process with so many opportunities for failure or disappointment. Learning to push through the disasters and move work forward has been the greatest of lessons.” 

It was during Southwell’s time at the polytechnic in Cambridge (now Anglia Ruskin University) that she became aware of Elspeth Owen, who produces pinched pots that are low fired, burnished, or smoked made from colored clay bodies and slips. “I loved her work along with Jane Perryman, known internationally for developing the ancient and traditional processes of smoke firing and transforming them into a contemporary art form.” 

Southwell comes from a long line of “amazing craftspeople.” She goes on, “The women in my family sewed, knitted, darned . . . Mum made my toys and I had always had this fascination with the fact that she had made them. It seemed incredible to me. From a very early age I was acutely aware of how much more things meant to me when they had been made by hand, especially by people I loved. My sister is a very talented textile artist but has never produced anything professionally. I think Mum would have loved to have gone to art school but never had the opportunity. Music was also a really integral part of my maternal family.” 

In January 2022, the cost of living crisis in the UK resulted in Southwell moving out of her business premises where she ran a pottery studio teaching evening classes and workshops. “The cost had become prohibitive. Firing and material costs rose dramatically, as did my rent. Even though I was much busier with the number of classes and students booking on, I was making less money. It did not make financial sense and I had to rethink things.” 

Now training to be a secondary school art and design teacher, she has been offered a part-time job teaching art, starting in September that will provide the financial stability “to get back to more making again.” 

Incorporating found materials into her work is the next goal. “I want to work on a smaller scale where pieces are assembled with other materials, such as driftwood, to better reflect the symbiotic relationship with nature that I feel we need to have. I am trying to have as little environmental impact as I can with my work.” 

To learn more, visit lindasouthwell.co.uk. 

the author British journalist Tim Saunders writes about art and ceramics. When he has time, he enjoys painting and making. 

Flower Sculpture

by Linda Southwell

My sculptures are made using white porcelain and a darker and lighter shade of a colored porcelain (1). Join two white porcelain pinch pots to make a ball. Flatten the base so that it is stable. Let it firm to leather hard. Pierce a hole where the center of the flower will be (2). 

Roll coils of increasing thickness: thinnest in the darkest colored clay and the thickest in white (3). Break the coils up into one-inch-long (2.5-cm) pieces (4). Smooth the clay between your palms so they look like lozenges. Press one end flat to create a petal shape (5). Dip your fingers in water and smooth the petal even thinner. 

Make approximately 60 large white petals first. Make approximately 30 medium, lighter petals, and finally approximately 20 small, darker petals last (see 6). Allow all of these to firm up so they hold their shape. 

Cut the thick end of all the petals with a potter’s knife (7). Score the ball shape around the pierced hole and add slip. Apply slip to the bottom of the smallest petals and attach to the ball in a ring around the hole, smoothing into place (8). Stagger how you attach the next ring of petals, so they fill the gap between the two on the ring before (see 9). 

After the third ring, switch to the medium petals. Add two or three rings. Before adding the larger outer petals, transfer your work onto a kiln shelf so that it is easier to move. Finally, add the largest, white petals. Use a soft, wet brush to clean any bits off (10). 

I dry my flower sculptures slowly and under plastic initially to prevent cracking. Once fully dried they are once fired to 2282°F (1250°C), unglazed so that the beauty of the clay can be appreciated.