Cygnet master potter, Ian Clare demonstrates the fine art of chatter

A Cygnet master potter has shared his special texturing technique for making all manner of beautifully crafted dishes and vessels – something taught to him by his father.

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IAN Clare is a member of the chattering class, but don’t hold it against him. Though the potter makes lots of coffee cups, it is not an allusion to a latte-sipping set or social stratum.

It is a rarified club to which the master potter was inducted as a teenager, when he was taught the texturing technique by his father, who was also a potter.

It involves returning a half-dry, wheel-thrown bowl to the rotating disc then holding a hand tool against the bowl as it spins to create rhythmic surface patterning.

Clare used to chatter a lot, he tells TasWeekend on a studio visit as he deftly demonstrates the method, then he left it for many years.

Studio Potter Ian Clare making a salad bowl at Cygnet. Picture Chris Kidd

It was after the death of his father that he took up chattering again. Now it is a distinctive marking for the Cygnet master, whose studio pulsates with the staccato marks on a range of vessels and plates.

The older man had seen it demonstrated in Sydney in 1974 by Japanese master Shigeo Shiga, to whom Clare was later apprenticed for three years.

“My father was a prisoner of war to the Japanese and very reluctant to go and see this Japanese master potter,” Clare says. “But my father was also the president of the local potters group, so he felt obliged to go.

Studio Potter Ian Clare making a salad bowl at Cygnet. Picture Chris Kidd

“He was gobsmacked by how good this guy was so he invited him back to our house for a meal that night. Both of them sat in the courtyard talking for two hours, but none of the family knew what they were talking about because they were speaking in Japanese.

“None of us had any idea Dad could speak Japanese. It was very cathartic for him.

“For me that is a very special story. It shows the act of forgiveness. I would not be a potter if my father had not been able to forgive.”

Ask Ian Clare to show you how to chatter a bowl on your visit to his studio at 46a Lymington Rd, Cygnet. Check out his work on Instagram @ian_clare_studio_potter.