Digby Hoets Pots

Digby's studio and home are located on a
five-acre property at the head of a quiet valley between Johannesburg and Pretoria in South Africa.

Both the house and the studio are thatched and
enjoy a tranquil view of the well-treed valley and
Johannesburg in the distance.

Digby makes his pots in three to four week cycles: two to three weeks making the pots and the final week
glazing and firing.He starts by throwing the base sections of all the pots he plans to make that week - usually
between 4 and 6 pots. If he is making a very large pot he will make only one pot that week so that he doesn't
need to take it off his wheel.


	When the pots are leather hard (usually the following day), he adds a fat coil to the pot and throws this section.

Each day a new coil / section is added to each pot until the desired height is achieved.


		The final coil forms the rim.Handles and surface and rim textures are applied once the pot is complete. Textures are achieved through rouletting, roping, combing, ribbing or slip trailing. When slips are applied they are poured onto a rotating, leather-hard pot and then combed through. All pots are raw-glazed with glazes being poured over the rotating pot.

Digby packs the kiln with the assistance of Watson Nyambeni who has worked with him for the last 20 years. Very large pots are hoisted onto the kiln using a pulley and gantry system.

Digby uses very basic, traditional glazes with a high clay content, (tenmoku and other saturated iron glazes, celadons, wood-ash and shino glazes) which are suited to reduction firing.

The 120 cubic foot trolley kiln is fired using a specially developed burner fuel. It takes about eighteen hours to fire to cone 13 (approximately 1380 deg Centigrade) and three full days to cooldown sufficiently to be opened.

Approximately 12 pots are fired at a time - pots shrink by about 20% from when they are thrown until they are fired.

Pots blend into the African veld.