Working With Clay And Fire

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31235, 6 December 1966, Page 12

Working With Clay And Fire

“Clay and fire's my language,” said Michael Trumic, in his studio in Linwood, as he dunked a biscuit-fired bowl into a bucket containing brown Temuka glaze liquid. “I use the clay as an expressive medium, regardless of what a potter ought to do. I just do what I like.” He inspected the coating on the bowl, smoothed his fingermarks on the base, and then added it to the benchful of pots awaiting the kiln. Trumic, who is in his seventh year as a potter and in his third year as Christchurch’s only professional potter, achieves a high standard of craftsmanship. A reflection of this can be found in the respect with which fellow potters speak of his light throwing technique, his good shapes, and his expertly controlled kiln work. It was also a reflection of this that his second exhibition of pottery, held in Several Arts last week, was virtually a sellout show.

Trumic’s own opinion of his work is modest: “I’m still developing. Hamada said it takes five years to master the basic craft techniques. I’ve had my five years, but it’s a case of the more you learn, the more you realise what you have still to learn.” STUDIO POTTER He describes himself as a studio potter, one who makes each piece separately. “I don’t do the same thing again and

again. If I make six cups, they will each differ slightly. The next six will be very different again. “A commercial potter is able to repeat an order for, say, so many bowls or so many mugs, but you can’t ask this of the studio potter because each piece is something new. “1 do drawing as an exercise sometimes, but my true drawing board is at the wheel,” he said, pointing out that two of the three wheels in his studio were specially fitted with heavy flywheels. “The ordinary commercial wheel does not keep its momentum for as long, so if I didn’t have these it would be hard Svork throwing my big pots,” he explained.

The work at the wheel determined whether a person could become a potter, he said (he is also a teacher with 17 pupils). “It is important that a potter should have an inborn feeling for shape. Without that he cannot work. Once you start throwing, the time with the clay is limited, and you have to work it before it loses its electicity. “But there’s a lot more to being a potter than that. You have to have the craft knowledge and you have to know a lot about chemistry, geology and heat engineering.” FIRING KILN

Trumic spoke about firing his big kiln. “I start at six in the morning and go till 10 at night. It would be a long and very lonely day if 1 was here on my own, but when the kiln is going, friends drop in, and we share a bottle of wine and talk. It’s rather good.” His ambition is to have a cottage wjth a kiln in the country, where he could work at any hour without having to worry about others. “Why is it that with all these miles and miles of beaches, the

cottages are closer together than in the town?” Trumic does not say much about his boyhood, part of it spent fighting in the mountains of Jugoslavia during the Second World War. After the war he qualified for a Belgian scholarship and studied medicine in Germany for three and a half years. It was there that he met his wife, Victoria, a Russian medical student They were going to settle in Australia, but saw New Zealand first and stayed because its ruggedness reminded Michael so much of his own land. When language difficulties handicapped continuation of Trumic’s medical studies, he became a commercial traveller, and later, a potter. A factor which has assisted Trumic’s development as a potter has been his connexion with Several Arts, a craft shop started by students and now managed by his wife.

“I though it a pity when they couldn’t continue, and that it would be fun to buy it. They didn’t want much for it, and the potters helped by sending work on consignment," he said. “Our aim is to promote crafts, nothing but crafts. You know, there are so many characteristics of a nation. One is its own crafts. New Zealand is not yet aware enough of this, but there is a growing awareness. The standard is improving all the time. We notice the difference. People won’t buy now what they would have three or four years ago—and we wouldn’t have it”