Moira creates natural organic vessels with rich surfaces. Her vessels are contemplative and tactile, and are strongly influenced by a sense of place as she draws upon the Essex coastal marshes and soft estuary landscape where she lives as the source for her inspiration.
Using just hand building techniques, such as pinching and coiling and a few basic tools, Moira builds her vessels one coil at a time, controlling the shape as it grows slowly and steadily. She enjoys the process, finding it therapeutic, as she works in a calm and intuitive way.
Finding a balance in the form between manmade and organic is always foremost in her mind.
Soft coloured slips are then applied in layers before she either burnishes with a stone, or adds a texture to the surfaces. No glaze is used.
After an initial bisque firing the vessels then receive a secondary firing in sawdust.
The technique of smoke firing has been central to her work for over twenty years now. During this time she has refined this low firing process, developing her own masking methods to create pattern and energy in the surface. The layering of the coloured slips, the masking and the depth of the sawdust firings, from light to dark, allows her to set the tone of each piece.
Every vessel represents a balance between the random, spontaneous element of the smoke firing and her intended design and is finally as individual as a stone on her beach, an entity that is always part of a larger whole. Through pattern, texture, colour and form, especially that which comes from the natural weathering process each vessel carries and communicates to others the spirit of the place that inspires her work.
Moira is a selected member of Anglian Potters, Suffolk Craft Society and the Craft Potters Association and her ceramics have featured in galleries and exhibitions across the UK and beyond.