Concentrating on pure form, researching for new colours
Colourful and sculptural, her new porcelain pots are designed as one-off artefacts which retain their basic function.The jugs, while suggesting natural forms, have a variety of distinctive handles – ensuring that each one is an individual.
Usch Spettigue was born in Germany and settled in England in 1963 with her English husband. She started making hand-built pottery while studying languages in Munich and returned to the craft full-time in 1973.
She established her studio at Harkstead in 1975. Since then, she has exhibited widely in East Anglia, as well as in London, the West Country, York, the United States and Germany. Her pots are all thrown. They are porcelain, single-fired at 1220° C in an electric kiln. Some of her pots are decorated with sgraffito, inlay or wax resist. Creative use of slips and glazes on different clays vary texture and colour. At present she is also concentrating on pure form with a variety of large jugs and spherical pots with inturned tops. Some of these pots are carved when they are in a leather-hard state to give a deeply grooved surface. She is a selected member of the Anglian Potters Association and of the Suffolk Craft Society.
