This is an example of a rant:

"Since January I have been working on a ceramic project very different from the normal mugs and plates which emerge from my kiln. I was asked to create a bespoke tile mural to sit in the centre of an already beautiful family kitchen, in a gorgeous farm house set in the idilic Somerset countryside... Gulp!

I had never made tiles on this scale before, I have of course made flat items - plates and platters - but tiles are a very different beast. Unlike dinnerware, tiles need to tessellate; dozens of geometrically identical shapes need to sit on a single plane to create a whole. As my GCSE Maths teacher will tell you, me and geometry are uneasy bedfellows and pottery pals will concur in the fact that flat things are very tricky to make; clay has a 'memory' and whenever possible clay particles want to revert back to their natural, unorganised, shambles (I think there is something in physics called 'chaos theory' which explains why but that's for another day). When making tiles they must be kept flat at all times, as soon as they are cut - moving them around is a big no no - bend a wet tile, no matter how gently, the clay will 'remember', and as soon as it's fired the tile will warp."

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