People / Louis Tipping Stevenson
Louis Tipping Stevenson is a London and Bristol based ceramic designer with a deep fascination with materials and the processes that shape them. What draws him to clay is the level of engagement it allows from the earliest stages of its life cycle, from sourcing and processing to forming and firing, and the way the material informs the outcome. He works with a variety of techniques, including slip-casting, press-moulding, slab-building and extruding. Using forms and waste materials from his surroundings as the basis for experimentation, he creates objects that retain evidence of their conception, strengthening bonds between process, product, and place.
Ceramic Stool
At the end of each academic year at my university there is a huge amount of resources that are thrown away. On my return to third year, I felt compelled to minimise my environmental impact through the use of locally sourced waste materials. The project that followed my return was grounded in functionality and familiarity, utilising old plaster moulds sawn into modular segments, and waste clay sourced from the sink traps of ceramics studios across London. Wanting to maximise the scale of my limited materials, I created a system where I could press-mould smaller cubic sections which were then joined together to form the stool before being fired in the kiln. Through material-led investigation and iterative making, the project examines how ceramic objects can convey a closer, more considered relationship between maker, material, and place.