Tabby Michelin
Tabby’s throwing skills and passion for pottery developed whilst living in Taiwan, guided by tutors at David Pipkin’s Cloud Forest Studio, in the densely-jungled mountains overlooking Taipei City. This experience allowed her to explore the simple, clean-lined, often conical shapes that characterise much of her work, with forms influenced by traditional Taiwanese and Japanese ceramic noodle bowls and tea cups.
She throws in stoneware, sometimes a smooth, pale, almost white clay; sometimes a more coarsely flecked material, containing tiny pieces of iron-bearing basalt. Using layered glazes, her palettes reflect both the startling colours and contrasts of Taiwan’s volcanic landscape as well as the more muted heathers, lichens and mosses of rural Teesdale, where she returned to live in 2022 and set up wolf wood studio.
Each piece carries one or both of her maker's marks; the trees of wolf wood, a ridge of brave larch trees, as sketched by her daughter, and her name in Mandarin, 羋璧文.
