The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 51 No 3 November 2012

Profile
that stuff changed my life and it changed the way I viewed how I was working and what I was doing."
Back in Hobart, Blakebrough pursued the large ARC project, which entailed reconfiguring the automatic
roller-head machine the European factories used to suit studio purposes, an initiative that was very wellfunded
for six years but ultimately abandoned. "We were ten years too late," says Blakebrough, since
by that stage the traditional studio pottery system had virtually disappeared in Australia. "However, the
Southern Ice Porcelain project, one of the things I didn't take seriously while we were doing it, proved to
be a winner."
With significant funding for the project provided over five years, Blakebrough "had a team of
people who were prepared to work on it, so every week there'd be a test going through." "You've
got considerations to meet in the raw state and other considerations to meet in the fired state," he
says, and often the objectives were in conflict. But "when you get something that's as workable as
Southern Ice is, and then you fire it [to such whiteness], the bloody stuff is almost pure magic!" Named
to highlight its purity and its Tasmanian origin, near the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic, Southern Ice
has been manufactured under licence by Clayworks Australia since 1999.
Blakebrough himself has used the clay exclusively since its creation, exploring its attributes through
thrown, slip-cast and slab-formed techniques and incorporating motifs that exploit the fineness,
translucency and glassy quality of the material. Earlier works were decorated using metallic salts and
calligraphic markings; but later, highly controlled etching processes were used to vary the wall thickness
of the pots, creating imagery through translucency. The themes were drawn from his environment and
experience, and depicted, for instance, the kelp forests of Fortescue Bay, Tasmania; the wind drifting