Kim Morgan - Handmade Pottery

Hub of a creative universe

While Kim Morgan's potter's workshop is the centre of his universe getting everything spinning in order takes practice and patience; a jug may collapse in a heap in the final moments or become thing of great splendour in one of those zen moments when everything's 'sweet as'.

A the start of the day, there's always a moment of apprehension when the wheel finds its rhythm, fingers limber up, the brain synchronises with the job design and the potter gets in touch with the clay.

Kim reckons when he starts a new job it can't be too different to an athlete at the starting line, a sculptor examining the raw stone or a painter at an empty canvas, taking everything in before the starting gun goes, the chisel makes its mark or the brush dips into the palette.

Kim Morgan's workshop, with its open view through the gum trees, over the top of the woolshed, and down the gently sloping hillside to the banks for the Tukituki River, is clearly geared for productivity.

Its design is based on years of understanding the optimal workflow so he can quickly move between creative and production modes. There are days with deadlines when the pressure's on and Kim knows there's a job to get on with, other times there's pleasure in just 'pottering around' until an idea takes hold.

I love being in my own workshop, it's the place I most enjoy, being here makes me want to create, to produce," says Kim.

The 80 sq m board and batten building, with a 20 sq m lean too for his kilns, is perched on the edge of his family lifestyle block and stained black to give it a timeless look. Inside there are three potter's wheels, a kneading table and racks and racks of work in varying stages of progress waiting to be glazed or fired in one of the two kilns that are almost in constant use.

Buckets of different glaze mixes are stacked in one corner and a pallet of powdered clay and mixer nearby. At one end of the workshop is a research, study and design area where he does his planning and sifts through volumes of old and new magazines and books for inspiration.