Graham Taylor

Yeah.

Ceramics brings together all sorts of different bits and pieces and it's sort of the merging of the four ancient elements, you know, earth, air, fire, water.

And that's sort of appropriate because when you make clay things at a microscopic scale, you join in platelets together, etc.

So we sort of merge archaeology

Experimental archaeology and geology, because of course we're using the raw materials of the earth.

So you've sort of got an overlap of ologies going on.

And while I don't think there is a specific ology for making ceramic objects, it's on the cusp there of all sorts of things.

How long you got?

Basically, I grew up where we are now in Northumberland, and there's lots of archaeology everywhere, and I was always fascinated living in this landscape of the history of it.

I was one of these weird kids who would spend his time wandering around ancient monuments rather than going and playing football, you know.

But I also was artistic, but interested in science.

But I didn't want my science too sciency, I suppose.

So I ended up doing an arts foundation course, largely with the intention of doing graphics, because that was sort of what I knew.

Went into a ceramic studio and went,

Hey, this is it.

I don't really believe in any sort of spiritual stuff going on, but it was like I'd done it before.

It was like, you know, you sort of got that feeling of, yeah, yeah, this just feels right, just feels like the right thing.

And yeah, ceramics took me.

As an undergraduate student, I became interested in the idea that what I was doing had this heritage that went back thousands of years.

And in that, there were bits of technology which weren't really used anymore.