On returning, rooting down, and making work that means something

Cara Guthrie has stocked with us for over six years, and there are few makers whose work we’ve loved longer or more consistently. So, when a gap opened up in the last two years, we felt it. Cara has been busy in the best and hardest ways: a move to the Perthshire Highlands, a new baby, a house renovation, a garden studio build, a major funded exhibition, and an ongoing collaborative project raising funds for Gaza. Oh, and she’s been quietly rethinking the very materials her practice is built on.

We’re so glad to have her back on the shelves, and even gladder she agreed to sit down and talk it all through with us.

F | You’ve been away from Fodder’s shelves for two years but clearly not away from making. For anyone catching up, can you tell us a little about where you’ve been and what life has looked like?

CG | I moved out to the Perthshire Highlands with my little family in May 2023. It has been a busy time since! We’ve welcomed another kid and moved house, which we are slowly renovating. Motherhood has really shifted my perspective and my feelings towards work have changed along with that. I have had so little time to make, so when I do I really want to make sure I am making meaningful work and work for nice people, like you Luci!

F | You have a new studio, a garden build. How has having your own dedicated space changed the way you work, or the rhythm of your days?

CG | It still feels like early days in the workshop but I am already loving the blurring of work and home life. I hung the washing up on the line this morning and made some bread, but I know that’ll mean I will be in the workshop after the kids are asleep tonight to make up the hours. I also get to load the kiln in my pyjamas then roll straight into bed.

F | You have been incredibly busy over the last few years, really highlighted by your exhibition Production at Custom Lane, exploring the invisible labour of breastfeeding and care work under a system that doesn't value it. That feels like a significant shift, using the work to say something political. What was that process like, and did it change anything in how you think about making?

CG | As I’ve got older, and especially since becoming a mum, I find it really hard to separate my work from my morals. Breastfeeding felt so intense the second time around, physically, financially, emotionally, and I felt compelled to explore the issue deeper. Production was a sort of unexpected subconscious idea that bubbled up from that. I was really lucky to get full funding from Creative Scotland, and Custom Lane very kindly offered me their space in-kind.

I’m still absorbing the project. I found out I’d got the grant the very day my youngest started nursery. I had only six weeks to make 1,800 porcelain cups, so it was pretty mad. I felt very much like a machine, which I guess became part of the commentary of the work itself.

Making conceptual work felt empowering, but putting it on show, I felt very exposed. It has been a steep learning curve and I am thankful to have returned to making functional ware since, though the ideas keep bubbling away.

F | You’ve been developing your practice toward wood firing and locally sourced materials, moving away from industrial inputs. What’s driving that shift, and where are you in the process?

CG | Again it’s this absolute need to practise what I believe in. Scrutinising systems and politics means I need to scrutinise my work too, and that’s led me to think deeply about materiality, extractivism and provenance. This is a lifetime’s effort but I am slowly getting on with it. I’ve started processing clay from construction sites and making glazes from waste materials. There’s a lot of testing but it’s really magic stuff when everything aligns, and each time it does, my practice shifts into that discovery.

F | What does working with locally sourced clay or materials actually feel like compared to the industrial equivalents? Is there a difference you can sense in the making, or in what the finished piece holds?

CG | It really depends on what I’m using, but my gosh, it’s laborious. My intention with waste clay, clay that has been dug up for removal with no forwarding use, is to make do with what it is. If it isn’t perfect, I’ll add some industrial ball clay, testing ratios until it feels plastic enough to use. This means I’m reducing my need for industrial materials whilst also utilising a by-product.

F | Another amazing project you have been working on, Pots for Palestine, brings together potters to raise funds and awareness for Gaza. Can you tell us more about how that project came about and what it means to you?

CG | Like so many of us, the unfolding of the genocide on the Palestinian people, and beyond now, has broken my heart. I was heavily pregnant when I organised the first charity raffle. I felt so aware of my fortune, being in a safe country, in comparison to pregnant women in Palestine. I had to speak up and again integrate what I do for a living with how I feel as a citizen of the world. Standing up to fascism and authoritarianism feels very, very important for us all to be doing right now, and we can do this in all sorts of ways.

F | Pottery wasn’t your first career, and you came to it through night classes at The Kiln Rooms in Peckham before developing your practice through apprenticeships. Looking back now, do you think coming to it later gave you something that an art school route might not have?

CG | I’m almost eleven years in since I first started making pots, but I never thought when I started those night classes that I’d be able to make a living from it. A lot of that fortune has come from being in the right place at the right time, and having a middle-class safety net to rely on if it hadn’t worked out. What intensive apprenticeships gave me over art school is the graft and hours at the wheel to really understand the material, my hands, and the more technical aspects of pottery. But I realise I missed out on having conviction in conceptual ideas, and those ideas being really robust, which I know art school gives people who go down that route. I’m still learning that part.

F | We’ve always loved the tones and softness of your work. It has always felt rooted in landscape. Has the move and the new studio changed what you’re looking at, or what’s feeding the work?

CG | I am born and raised in rural Scotland, not so far from where I now live. I would have retched at the thought of returning here if you’d asked me as a teenager! But I feel salmon-like. There was an urge in me to return to the river and spawn here. Wide open spaces, wild places, these are ultimately the places that make me feel good. I like feeling insignificant yet symbiotic with my surroundings. I am so lucky to have the choice to live here.

F | Is there a piece in this new collection that you’re most attached to, or that surprised you?

CG | I really enjoy making the faceted bottles, which several people have told me look like giant pencils! The form feels very intuitive to me and it’s not something I’ve seen specifically before, though I’m sure someone somewhere at some point in history has made them.

The wood ash glaze used on some of the pieces feels very personal. The ash is from our fireplace, which kept us going over the very dreary winter months. Our house has an EPC of E, which means it’s very cold. We appreciated the fire more than ever.

F | Finally, what does it feel like to be back?

CG | Whilst I never got to take proper maternity leave, I was making pots when my second born was three weeks old, returning to the shelves of Fodder feels really good. You are such a kind and generous spirit of a customer and I really appreciate that. Thanks for sticking with me through my journeys into motherhood. Not all customers have supported that.

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There is something quietly extraordinary about Cara’s work, and about the way she talks about it. The ash glaze from your fireplace. The 1,800 cups made in six weeks. The pyjama kiln loads. She makes pots that live on shelves and tables and windowsills, and she makes them while wrestling with the biggest questions about care, labour, land and politics. We think that matters. We’re so glad she’s back.

Shop Cara Guthrie’s collection now

Image Credit: Kimberley Grant