ABSTRACT
On 17 February 2006, seven months after graduating, I swore an oath in the Royal Courts of Justice and declared I had nothing. In legal terms, I was bankrupt. Fortunately, nine bags of clay were not considered an asset, so I kept the raw material and faced the decision of what to make with it. These circumstances shifted my approach to ceramics and clarified the significance both of clay and the processes of making as elements I was unwilling to compromise. Perhaps a more astute person might have negotiated the situation by attempting to make things that could easily be sold, or even forgotten about ceramics altogether, but with nothing left to lose, I gained a sense of freedom to make what interested me most.
