Meet Hannah Billingham - the young Beverley ceramic artist on the rise

The young ceramic artist from Beverley lives in a cul-de-sac in a smallish modern house with her husband, Joe. They married when she was 19 and he was 20. Joe works for the local council but is on hand to help with admin, posting out pots and offering biscuits when journalists come calling.

Hannah is now 22 and absorbed in her art. Her contemporary pots, costing between £30 and around £600, sell out more quickly than she can make them, often to buyers in the US.

All the making happens in the house, with the small conservatory turned into a studio for her wheel and shelves for pots. Her electric kiln is in a new shed that steals part of the garden.

Hannah makes her delicate ceramic vases individually by hand, first throwing the clay and shaping it on the wheel, then turning the dried pot and trimming away ribbons of clay to thin the walls and perfect the shape of the vase.

“I decorate my work using a process called slip trailing, where slip is piped onto the surface. Slip is a mixture of clay and water,” she says.

Once ready for firing, the pots go into an electric kiln where each piece is “cooked” twice: bisque firing (to 1,000C) and glaze firing (to 1,220C). The glaze (Hannah makes her own) goes through a chemical reaction during the firing to form a hard and shiny surface.

She’s skilled in what she does and three pieces of her work can be seen in at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull until April 26.

Hannah has been in the spotlight recently. Last December, she popped up on Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas, a sort of TV advent calendar, in which she was among the makers featured in a film.

She thinks the producers found her through Instagram, where her @hannahbillinghamart account has more than 32,000 followers. Being singled out by Kirstie Allsopp was great for business.

“After the episode finished, I went on my website and kept refreshing the page, and sales were just coming through. Whenever I put something on my website, it sells in about half an hour,” says Hannah,

Can she keep up? “No, I really can’t, the demand is so high, I’m getting emails from galleries and clients constantly and I do have to say no to a lot of things. You can use certain techniques to speed up the process, but for me I want to stick with hand-thrown, completely unique pieces. It’s important for me as an artist that everything I make is individual and one of a kind.”

Hannah “discovered” ceramics four years ago on an arts foundation course in Lincoln. “I thought I’d be specialising in drawing and painting, but I had one or two workshops in ceramics and just loved it,” she says.

“It’s just the process, it’s so varied, it’s not just one thing. You start off with throwing on the wheel, then there’s turning, decorating, firing, glazing and there’s always more to learn. Really, I think it’s therapy for me. I love order, precision and symmetry.”

Hannah came up with the dot technique early on. “I started off using glaze and I knew I wanted to experiment with surface decoration, but early on nothing was very good. With ceramics, it takes a good few months to build up those techniques,” she adds.

Her pots are made of white stoneware clay and she leaves them to dry for about a day, depending on size. “That’s this afternoon’s job,” she says, pointing to the shelf where pots thrown the day before are awaiting the next stage.

Ceramics can be a hard living and Hannah made few sales at first, until trade took off last year. “I was very aware that I want to be an artist and I want to make a product that sells, but at the same time I don’t want to lose the artistic quality of my work,” she says.

Around 85 per cent of her ceramics end up in America (more work for postman Joe). She has only had one breakage to date, and that involved mugs, not the delicate-looking stem vases.

The work keeps her busy four days a week, some evenings and occasionally intrudes into the weekend. “Ideally, I like to produce about four large pots a week or about 24 miniatures. I always end up working the evenings too. I just can’t stop and like to get as much done as I can. A lot of love and care goes into each one.”

Hannah was determined to prove herself right in thinking that she could make a go at being a ceramicist. Her dream is to be selected as a member of the Craft Potters Association, based near the British Museum in London and founded in 1958. Members become permanent artists whose work is always on show at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre in Holborn.

But for now, Hannah is happy at home, producing pots that travel the world. Those who buy her work might be surprised to find its origins lie in relatively modest surroundings. “It’s just me in my conservatory,” she says.

https://hannahbillinghamart.jimdo.com/