Dabs

I spent lockdown in a bubble with my sister and her new baby. I watched how he used his new fingers to knead her breast while he sucked. Then tried my own fingertips on leather and clay.

Clay from al-Nazla village in Fayoum, veg-tanned belly leather
Leather 190cm x 44cm x 11cm. The sixty clay forms go from 9 to 69 millimetres in diameter.
Made in Somerset, England, in 2021

With thanks to Edward Gorochowski for his photographs.

The small forms are made with clay from al Nazla. For thousands of years, the potters of the village have used their unique method to make distinctive round bottomed vessels. Their clay is made from a mixture of river mud and wood-ash from the kilns.

Engy holding the first small forms. Fayoum, 2019.

Dabs before their first firing. Somerset, England, 2021.

Before I considered touch I had got involved in skin.

Pimple stamps, rollers and moulds with unfired forms.