In Conversation with Anna Lambert

Contemporary Ceramics: The titles you use for your work are very expressive in how they tell stories about a place, such as Pomfret’s Wood, Bright Young Trees. How do these places inform your work, and what is your relationship with them?

Anna Lambert: I am interested in the way people contribute to mitigate their impact on climate change, particularly the planting of woodland. It is so optimistic. Steve Pomfret is part of Lund Studios, in North Yorkshire, where I teach a class each year, so I have seen the growth of this wood over the last 4 years or so. Steve has chosen native trees and has incorporated loads of colour, with spindle, rowans, willows and others in full autumn colour when I was there. 

Other places have offered similar inspiration: Yorkshire ancient meadows, the vegetable garden at West Dean, also a place where I teach. These are places where I can visit repeatedly and have personal connections.  

I find it very hard to make pots about places with which I have no connection. However, connecting with the ‘audience’, my potential buyers, is also in my mind so I try to find images which will appeal to people who don’t have that connection with place.  

CC: Your work has always involved nature in some way, often with the portrayal of animals. How has your practice changed over time? What has been a seminal and/or inspirational moment?

AL: My career until now has had two distinct parts. From 1980 to around 2010 I made relief modelled, coiled and painted pieces which generally reflected my interest in birds and other creatures, as well as connections with folk art and pre-industrial ceramics of the UK and Europe.  

30 years of intricate modelling took its toll on my body, and I decided to find a new way to continue working in ceramics which was kinder to my body. I had often felt frustrated with the earlier work, which contained strands of meaning around place and environmental issues.  

I used an MA research project to build on these themes in my new work while maintaining a connection with the older style. I stopped portraying  birds, as they had such deep appeal that other facets of the work were overlooked.  

CC: Has clay always been your artform? How did you first get involved in working with clay?

AL: Always clay.

I thought I’d be a sculptor when on my Foundation Art course, but clay got me. I had the simple idea that I would live in the country, make pots and have children, and I kind of have done that, if not quite in the way that I anticipated.

I was interested in environmental issues from the start and decided to work in earthenware and to make pieces that sold well as priorities against wasting resources.

CC: What was the first piece of art that really mattered to you?

AL: I didn’t know they were ‘Art’ at the time: my primary school had several very large murals painted by Pat Tew on the major walls of the school, depicting folk tales in a 1950s style. I would spend assemblies and lunchtimes dreaming myself into the stories. Later, I realised that my colour palette and style of drawing has been heavily influenced by these paintings. There were also John Piper, Paul Nash and Henry Moore drawings set into the wall at child height. It was just a state primary school in Hertfordshire.

CC: Do you find inspiration from elsewhere? What images keep you company in the space where you work?

AL: I like the paintings, all sorts, from early Italian frescoes to Mary Newcombe, Robert Rauschenberg to Maggi Hambling. Too many to remember. Also writing, such as Kathleen Jamie, and gardeners. On my wall now are images of the work of Norwegian ceramicist Marit Tingleff and Ken Eastman. 

CC: How does working with clay influence your life beyond the workshop?

AL: Being an artist in any medium is totally absorbing. Ceramicists are a sociable and generous group on the whole.  I feel I have gained resilience and resourcefulness through being around them.