In Conversation with Hilary Bird Mayo

I’m Hilary Bird Mayo, a London based artist making sculptural ceramics. Previoulsy known for making hand built, stoneware vessels, using the clay as canvas under the name Hilary Mayo. The name change signifies a change in direction.

Clay is the medium I use to express myself and I had felt frustrated with the limitations of my practise for some time. At the start of 2024 I took time out to experiment with new materials and approaches to making in order to explore my ideas. I see my pieces for Edgelands as a stepping stone to the next stage.

What led you to explore ceramics? Was there a specific moment or inspiration that sparked your interest in working with clay? 

My clay addiction began at school aged 13. Pottery was my way out of needlework and the compulsory making of a gingham apron that I had to embroider, and in which I had no interest.

The very first piece of work I had to make was a cider jug. I coiled it in the shape of an apple core. It came out well and the glazing worked. The teacher was delighted and I was hooked, I still have the piece. Little did I know then how challenging glazing could be!

Did you receive formal training in ceramics? 

Ceramics is my second career, though at school I had ambitions to be a potter, I ended up making programmes at the BBC, via a History of Design degree in which I specialised in ceramic history.

I began formal training in 2009 on the renowned City Lit Diploma course with inspirational teachers, including Annie Turner, Robert Cooper and Sara Radstone and excellent glaze tech taught by Kate Starkey. Despite making for over 40 years I only began my professional ceramics career in 2012.

Where do you typically find inspiration for your art? Are there specific locations or experiences that have directly inspired your work for Edgelands? 

Place is important, while themes of fragility and resilience are a constant. In recent years my work has responded to the fast eroding Suffolk Coast which I’ve been frequenting for over 25 years.

I chose Orford Ness, a long shingle spit off the Suffolk coast, as my ‘edgeland.’ It has long held fascination. The site of an abandoned, one-time top-secret MoD base used for experiments and bomb testing, it is now a place of wildness and a sanctuary for birdlife.

Can you walk us through your creative process, from concept to completion?

I love research and begin with words – an article or book, a line of poetry or a quotation, observed details in the landscape, and photographs of anything that catches my eye. As I walk I pick up rusted objects, hag stones, twigs, leaves, feathers, shards, decaying wood, discarded fragments… I’ve got quite a collection. It’s a habit I began in childhood and an important part of my creative process.

Ideas percolate over time while I fill notebooks with words and sketches. When I begin making I have an idea in my head and it can be an almost subconscious process when I’m in the zone. 

I am a hand builder and usually use finely rolled earthstone slabs which I carefully assemble, then subtly manipulate. I apply up to five layers of glaze, which I make myself, with a brush. However, for Edgelands I experimented with combinations of different materials: stoneware clays, porcelain, bone china, and nichrome wire. I also employed different making methods, hand building with slabs, pressing lumps of clay into old brick moulds,  creating structures with hand cut lengths, slip casting, and hand painting found fragments from the natural world with porcelain slip. A variety of glazes, stain and oxides, were applied sparingly with a brush, some pieces left unglazed and all were fired to 1260c in an electric kiln. Each piece in the exhibition is an assemblage of between two and six elements. This is the final stage, working out  which pieces go together and when to incorporate found objects. I’ve enjoyed discovering the flexibility this part of the process has given me.

Where do you create your work? Could you share a bit about your studio or workspace? 

I have a small garden shed in my small London garden. My dream would be to have a sink in the studio. At the moment I have a series of different sized jugs. As a deadline looms, I have less time to reorganise and the working space gets increasingly small!

Do you have preferred techniques or materials you work with in ceramics? What draws you to these approaches? 

 Hand building with stoneware and porcelain clays. I like the variety it gives me.

My aim with these sculptural works is to capture the essence of this haunting, liminal space and the feelings it evokes, rather than a literal representation.

Built structures are represented by bricks used as plinths, one left bare as concrete,  another covered by a creeping lichen like glaze, and another painted with local clay, has fractured leaving a cantilevered plinth on which the nest like form rests precariously.

Corrugations run through a few of the works reflecting roof lines and discarded materials. Undefined, broken objects lie abandoned, amongst the grasses and teasels, exposed to the elements, rusting in the salty wind. Distinctive buildings, designed to contain exploding bombs, still stand, derelict, giving the landscape a strange and eerie appearance. My response to these influences is reflected in pieces such as ‘Teetering on the Brink,’ ‘Holding the Line,’ and ‘Traces of our Passage.’

Resurgent nature and the thriving bird life is represented in porcelain and bone china.

The nest-like forms are constructed over a period of weeks.  I begin by rolling long thin coils of porcelain paper clay. These are cut and carefully dropped into a plaster mould, building layer upon layer until I’m happy with the general form. Bone china slip is added to adhere this outside layer. Shorter porcelain coils are rolled and finished on tree bark to create texture. Once carefully place and adhered the leaves are made using small balls of porcelain flattened and shaped in the hand and impressed with texture to create the fine leaf like lines. These are carefully placed, then very slowly dried. Once fired a fine brush is used to paint stain and oxide, like a watercolour, on the leaves. Finishing off with a clear, shiny porcelain glaze on the very edges of the leaves so they just catch the light.

The egg shell forms are slip cast with bone china – a tricky material that I hadn’t used before and the nail headed flowers are made from porcelain and nichrome wire. I fire these separately and attach them at the end of the process.