Mr Ben – aka Ben Hall – is a potter, painter, illustrator, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. So, it seems apt that while he was hand-carving 1,500 gulls for his new TOAST stoneware collection, classical guitar music was his soundtrack of choice. “Blasting the tunes is all part of creating my own little world. It’s a mini petri dish where I can experiment,” he explains of his Sheffield studio, which is housed in part of what was once a pewter factory.
The birds, which decorate Ben’s hand-thrown mugs and bowls, are made using his take on sgraffito (a technique that involves scratching through the surface of an object to reveal the contrasting colour underneath). “I approach each piece like a woodcut, using etching tools to gouge into the white clay. It’s like peeling back the negative space and the pressure of that makes interesting, spontaneous lines,” he says. “When someone holds a mug, they'll feel the marks and the thumb dint at the top of the handle; those relics of the process are the story of how it’s made.” Equally important is the colour of the slip itself, which is his own recipe. “Cobalt has an iridescent quality that catches the light. When I’m doing this effect, at the bisque stage, a piece can look quite dull but then opening the kiln after a firing, it’s like magic. It never fails to excite me.”
A self-taught potter who loved drawing as a child, Ben first studied illustration at the University of Brighton. “It was a lovely course because the lecturers allowed us to work in different mediums. They taught everyone to have the mindset of an artist rather than setting us all up to be children’s book illustrators,” he recalls. “That was where I came up with the idea of Mr Ben as a character. I’ve always struggled with the term artist as a definition of what I do because I don’t make any grand statements with my work: I’m just a creative person, interested in many things. I’ve realised now that’s enough, but initially Mr Ben was a method to package that in a self-deprecating way.”
Back home after graduating, Ben bought an old cast iron wheel from a secondary school in Liverpool and watched Youtube videos of French potter Jean-Nicolas Gérard. “I’m not someone who learns by having somebody teach them; I have to do it myself. It’s the same with music, I’m self-taught in all the instruments that I play,” he reflects. “Working with clay is a steep learning curve. There are so many opportunities for things to go wrong. At the beginning, everything is a failure. Then when something does work, you have such clarity.” He believes that while his non-technical approach to the craft might result in more kiln disasters, it also informs his artistic style. “What’s interesting is that sometimes I might think I’ve made a mistake but then, if I do it for long enough, I find that’s what I like best about the final piece.”
Although Ben started off making traditional terracotta, as his practice developed, he realised that “illustration is a part of who I am.” Today, this signature trait can be seen, not only in his tableware, but also on bespoke vases that are covered with personal dates, names and phrases. “At one point I got really into gravestone typography. I think there’s something really emotive about those weird, wonky serif typefaces,” he says of the inspiration behind their designs. Occasionally, he loads the vases into a pannier on his bicycle and heads off into the Peak District to hand-carve outdoors. “It’s very liberating. I’m lucky in that I can take my work to different places and be slightly nomadic with it. I once spent a couple of months living in a van. I drove up to Scotland and took about 20 pots with me.”
For TOAST, Ben has made a mug and bowl, both hand-thrown on a wheel and shaped into a low, wide vessel with a pulled handle and footring respectively. “No gull is the same,” he says of the motifs he has created by scratching away a layer of blue slip, before coating the pieces in a transparent glaze. “I treated each bowl and mug as a circular canvas, cradling it in my lap and allowing the resistance of where each one curves to inform the carving. They are the most refined gulls I’ve ever made but they still have a playful, naive quality.”
When Ben isn’t carving clay, he paints landscapes; runs a small record label, Bingo Records, with friends (he illustrates the album cover artwork); writes and releases music; and goes on tour with one of his two bands, garage-rock Mock Tudors or folk-indie Mr Ben & The Bens. “Music is a side hustle but ceramics pays the bills, which is something I haven’t quite wrapped my head around. I pinch myself that I have this opportunity because it feels like a dream. Pottery suits my temperament and every year I find myself more in love with it,” he concludes.
Discover Ben Hall ceramics.
Ben wears the TOAST Cotton Canvas Project Apron, Cotton Hemp Denim Jacket, Bill Cotton Wide Leg Trousers, and Theo Organic Cotton Short Sleeve Tee.
Words by Emma Love.
Photography by India Hobson.
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