"Why I Make Pots"

I have been a maker since childhood and have always tried to invent useful things. I now make pots and would like them to be useful.

My own enjoyment of food makes me want my pots to inspire people to make good food, present it on interesting pots and to eat it in convivial company.

Lets live life with style and enthusiasm!

I am a born enthusiast and want to encourage everyone.

I work on my own, and like to keep to very simple raw materials. I work with one clay body, two coloured slips and three decorative techniques which gives me more than enough to learn to control!

I rely on skill and experience to produce the range of textures, colours and finishes on my pots. I am continuously experimenting.

As a country potter I like to create pots that have an old fashioned country feel to them yet still retain their elegant lines.

I hope you enjoy my pots; I enjoyed making them.

The Forge
In 1985 when Toff and Georgina MIlway were looking for pottery premises they found the Old Forge buildings empty and semi derelict.

It had been a working forge and wheel-wright's shop up until 1952.

Despite the generations of sooty deposits, tar blackened walls and quantities of rusty old iron everywhere, the beautiful Cotswold stone buildings were ideal for use as a pottery and showroom.

The ancient ridge and furrow orchard, surrounding the Old Forge is typical of the area and provides a picturesque setting in which to make and sell handmade pottery.

Spring brings a truly spectacular show of blossom; Summer yields a crop of old varieties of plums, damsons and greengages and Autumn provides quantities of pears and apples for food and drink.

With such abundance who could resist making pots for them all.

Toff Milway CV
Born in Preston, Lancashire in 1949, Toff was educated at Campbell College in Northern Ireland.

His first experience of pottery was in 1968 working for Christa Reichel, a German sculptress, in the south west of Ireland. He then worked in various pottery workshops, culminating in a year as manager of a production workshop for a Camphill Village Trust.

He joined the Harrow Studio Pottery Course run by Mick Casson and Vic Margrie in 1970 where he was introduced to kiln building by Wally Keeler and high fired salt-glaze by Gwyn Hanssen. A brief period in France working with Gwyn inspired him to build his first salt-glaze kiln in 1971 while still at Art School. He subsequently spent time working in Africa, France and the U.S.A.

Salt-glaze has always been his particular specialisation and even while working in Lesotho, Southern Africa, for 3½ years, he still managed to produce Salt-glaze pots.

On his return from working in East Africa in 1985 he established his own studio workshop and gallery in the Cotswold village of Conderton at the foot of Bredon Hill. He has developed his own pottery style and an increasing diversity of Salt-glaze techniques which include dipping, pouring and trailing liquid clay slips, with scraffito and roulette decoration on to a very fine Ball clay based body.

This gives him more than enough to get to grips with.

Toff is an active member of The Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen and is a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association.

What is Salt-Glaze? How does it work?
Salt-Glaze is an unusual ceramic process whereby the outside of a clay pot is melted into a glaze by salt at very high temperatures.

This is achieved by throwing common salt (NaCl) on to the flames at top temperature (1320°C) where it vaporises and reactive Sodium (Na) is released to dissolve the highly siliceous (SiO₂) stoneware clay into a soda glass (glaze) on the pots.

Unfortunately it also dissolves the kiln and shelves!

This technique leads to the dramatic surface textures so characteristic of salt-glaze; from coarse orange peel on a sanded body to the subtle lustre on a smooth clay body.

One only has to look at the pots for a feast of visual and tactile delight.

Toff's Quick History of Salt-Glaze
Salt-glaze stoneware was first introduced, from the Rhine Basin, in the 16th Century.

It was the first thin, durable and corrosion resistant pottery to be made in Europe. Huge quantities of flaggons, jugs and mugs were imported over the next 100 years, including the famous 'Greybeards' or 'Bellarmines'.

By 1671 John Dwight succeeded in producing brown salt-glazed stonewares at Fulham and the technique quickly spread.

The introduction of white clays from Devon and Dorset in 1720 saw the development of a white-body salt-glaze on which they attempted painted decoration in imitation of the superior Chinese porcelains.

The invention in 1770 of a low temperature creamware body with a smooth lead glaze which readily accepted painted decoration not only set the future for English tableware but sounded the death knell of salt-glaze's pre-eminence.

Salt-glaze was henceforth relegated to the likes of wine flaggons, ginger beer bottles, ink wells and sewage pipes. Indeed it was the salt-glaze sewage pipe that ultimately made Salt-glaze a great benefactor of mankind; for it was piped water and sewerage that was primarily responsible for the eradication of cholera and typhoid and the cleaning up of our cities. Thus salt-glaze was pivotal in the development of mankind..!!!