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Rhiannon and Paul Gash | Episode 904

At Llanddona Beach Pottery Rhiannon and Paul Gash have a totally tactile and haptic studio. Rhiannon throws earthenware pots, glazed with oxide glazes that Paul and Rhiannon make together. Rhiannon is visually impaired. Guide-dog Bailey helps out around the studio.

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Rhiannon what is your favorite piece to make?

Rhiannon: I want to master bowls and bottle shapes. Yeah, tactile shapes. I am interested in form and to the extent I can color too.

What is your favorite tool that you work with?

Rhiannon: I have a sort of wooden thing with a spoon at one end and a sharp end on the other end. I think that’s probably my favorite.

Paul what is the your favorite piece that she throws that you enjoy glazing?

Paul: She has mastered the art of turning the base of vases and pot shapes and that gives me something I can hold on to when I am dipping a piece into the glaze and she has understood now the importance of me being able to actually control something in my hands so shes’s producing pieces that I can work with as the glazer.

Rhinnaon I am going to ask an ignorant question. You are blind so why does color matter to you?

Rhiannon: That’s not an ignorant question. So anyone who has lost their sight over time will have a memory of color. It’s very deep. Also if you don’t see sometimes you have kind of a swirling patterns and sometimes they have color, this is electrical stuff going on in the brain. As I said to you earlier everybody’s vision loss journey is different and I would not speak for anybody else. And also, blind people don’t see nothing. I think it’s only four percent who see black. So I can see a tiny, tiny impression of color at the very side. I can’t see it at all in the front.

Paul what impresses you the most about your wife?

Paul: Well, I would go back to a little chat we had off air a few minutes ago and I suppose it must be her tenacity. You know she’s one of those people that you meet that is good at everything she does. What she hasn’t mentioned because it’s not a part of your podcast is that she also does a lot of gardening. So our gardening relationship is very much like our potting relationship. She gets up close and does the details and I just take care of the peripheries. I keep the grass down. So she is somebody that is good to work with.

Rhiannon: I think, Paul, the other side of that is I have loads of ideas and I start things, I plant things and then Paul gets left looking after them. I have to be honest. I am very lucky to have him.

How has faith in yourself been built up through clay?

Paul: That’s a very good question. That is a very deep question and we would probably need several programs to answer it completely. But she is growing her confidence and you can see her confidence growing through what she is producing on the wheel. And I can see it because I am handling everything that she creates. I have to follow up. What would you say Rhiannon?

Rhiannon: Well, I think just keeping going. Like yesterday I didn’t have a very good throwing day but I am going back after this program today. Just keeping going back and being more and more selective as we go. Also there are days when husband and wife are a bit grumpy with each other and I think it’s wonderful that we can go and start discussing colors and shapes and it kind of is a really wonderful territory of leaving other things behind. And that’s just normal and it’s a privilege to have a shared thing and I do appreciate it and I am really impressed with your glazing journey. Which is not easy, is it? To be honest.

Paul: Every time I am doing something I am learning from it.

Book

Beyond East and West by Bernard Leach 

Contact

Instagram: @llanddona_beach_pottery

PS: A Note From Rhiannon

I have been very fortunate to receive tuition from two local potters who had to learn to teach me as a blind potter: Janet Edwards https://www.instagram.com/janetedwardspottery/ and Richard Daniels https://www.anglesey-today.com/richard-daniels-studio-potter-carreglefn-anglesey.html

A shout out for Bath Potters Supplies who have a very accessible website https://www.bathpotters.co.uk/

Favourite book: Bernard Leach – Beyond East and West https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571296125-beyond-east-and-west/

I am currently preparing for Anglesey Open Studios April 2023 https://angleseyartsforum.org/anglesey-arts-weeks-open-studios-and-galleries/