Beginnings: how small steps led to bigger discoveries
Phil chatting with Michaela during September’s Open Day. Conversations like these often encourage the next step.
Beginnings
The start of my journey into pottery/ceramics starts with a diagnosis - my mum was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and I found myself becoming more and more withdrawn from life and less creative. I saw an advert for taster courses at Sunken Studio - specifically throwing, which is something which had always interested me, and honestly at the time scared me a little - but I knew I had to open myself out to the world and try something new.
Revolutionary. That’s how that first session felt. The most striking element, beyond the feeling of creating via addition, was how quiet I felt. For the first time in months, my mind was quiet, and my hands were busy! Creation was coming from the soul, and I didn’t have to feel sad, I was just creating and using my time to make!
Studio life and finding a place in the community
Roll on Starter Membership! Naturally the next step was to join the vibrant community at the studio, and keep this feeling going. It felt amazing and exciting to join a really-well established community of makers, all of us working fundamentally with the same material, expressing our creativity in a myriad of forms, colours, and styles.
Studio life, and a medium that clicked with me, came at the perfect time - I could engage socially with others, have common ground as we work with the same material in similar ways, and be able to connect with my creative self and express how and what I was feeling through the creation of real, tangible forms.
This safety net of community and a mindful creative practice was integral to the time that I’d truly dreaded - which was the culmination of the earlier diagnosis. Having the studio and creative practice as an escape from turmoil and trauma was absolutely key in helping to deal with that grief.
Glaze test tiles.
Glaze, glaze, and more glaze
More positivity. And a turning point in my own creative practice. Make a glaze! Something that I'd been interested in ever since starting in pottery, when Chris and the team announced MAG would be coming, I literally could not have signed up faster if I'd tried. Expression of creativity through glaze is a whole new avenue of pottery - which if you know me from the studio - you’ll know I could literally talk your ear off for hours about.
The simple, easy to understand course structure, and references to simplistic chemistry, alongside an engaging visual element (you get to see so many glaze test tiles!) was incredibly interesting to me. Learning how glazes are made, and the wealth of opportunity that just a small number of ingredients can achieve, in different proportions - how could you not be entranced?
Since the course finished, I’ve been an active member of Glaze Club at the studio, and have made my way through so many different recipes - the magic of expectation as you mix up a creation, and the hopes you pin on a recipe being exactly as you envision; it’s addictive.
A series of coasters exploring colour and surface variation - part of Phil’s ongoing glaze research inspired by the Grimshaw commission palette.
Grimshaw commission
In June 2025, Sunken Studio was approached by the Discovery Centre in Leeds, who were looking for support with a commission idea - a series of ceramics to go alongside an exhibition in Leeds Art Gallery celebrating the life and works of John Atkinson Grimshaw.
Their idea was to have a series of work inspired by the colours of two of Grimshaw’s works, namely Iris and Park Row. [Gold/Orange/Brown, and Blue/Green/Turquoise/Yellow - for those uninitiated in Grimshaw’s works as I was!]
By chance, Rebecca Eelbeck from Leeds Museums and Galleries picked up on one of the pot tests I had out which were dressed in an iron-based gold glaze - my attempt to replicate one of the studio’s old house glazes when the kilns still went up to cone 10.
With trepidation in my heart, and an armful of ‘Just do it Phil’ - I accepted their commission. If life had taught me anything, it was to do the things that scare you.
The studio and community have been absolutely invaluable in supporting my journey on this commission - 80 pieces was no small feat! Members supported and cheered me on, Chris and the team were on hand to offer technical advice, and the glaze club were crucial in helping develop the second of the Grimshaw palette for the work. (Special shout out to Sarah Maplesden for creating the recipe we eventually tweaked to make the Park Row glaze!).
One of Phil’s wheel-thrown mugs and coaster, finished in a glaze developed after the Make a Glaze course - a mix of iron warmth and smooth precision.
Looking ahead
Summing up, my journey in ceramics so far has been an interesting one. What started out as an attempt to re-kindle a creative connection to my inner self and trying to find a distraction to an ongoing trauma in my life has led to a wealth of opportunity and creativity.
Far from where I expected to end up after signing up for that initial taster session, pottery is now an integral part of my life, and represents a wonderful, grounding creative outlet. The process of creating something beautiful and nuanced from literal mud is utterly thrilling and something I would recommend to anyone.
Because of those small, meaningful steps from that initial taster session, doing the things that scare you - I’ve grown from someone unconnected, blocked creatively, and stuck in trauma - to being connected to vibrant artistic community, flourishing creatively, and feeling positive about the future - collaborations with local coffee businesses, independent art stores… the future is bright!
Words and images by Phil Ankers, with additional photography from Joanne Crawford.
To see more of Phil’s work or enquire about commissions, visit www.potterybypa.com.