In the Design House, Adam Buick, Journey Jar, 2023

Adam Buick
Journey Jar
2023
Stoneware with inlaid porcelain path,
Nuka glaze interior
Height: 68 cm / 2ft 3 in.

'Paths are a motif I sometimes use, inlaying a line of porcelain into the surface of my pots to represent my actual and metaphorical journeys through a place. To understand a landscape is to move through it, to give it context. For me, paths are like common routes of experience, they are connection through time, to others and the land.'
- Adam Buick, Raw Earth, 2025

For two decades, Adam Buick has used the form of Korean moon jars as a canvas to engage in an ongoing dialogue with the Welsh landscape and the transience of human endeavour. Buick's Journey Jar pays homage to a four-day walk across Pembrokeshire. The line of porcelain inlaid onto this large and beautiful jar reflects a lone pilgrimage beginning at dusk in Crymych, finishing at Porthmelgan on St David's Head.

Buick is infatuated with the form of the Korean Moon Jar, and is endlessly experimenting with different materials, glazes and firing temperatures. Journey Jar was made in five separate stages, being thrown, then dried and then adding the next layer. Buick explains that whilst he constantly has the form of the jar in mind, the process of metamorphosis that occurs in the kiln can often be unexpected; just as we are changed and shaped by our journeys through the world.

The rich, earthy colour of the jars exterior is like the land through which the path is laid. Yet looking into the jar we are met with the soft, entrancing blue of the nuka glaze. Speaking to the New Art Centre, Buick explained this to be 'like the land meeting the sea'. The 'land' stretches over the expanse of the jars form, as conspicuous as the route mapped onto it, whilst the act of peering into the jar from above feels more intimate, and calls to mind gazing into deep waters from a great height, as if stood on a cliff looking down into the sea.

In 2001, Adam Buick received his BA joint honours in archaeology and anthropology at Lampeter University, and subsequently attended the West Wales School of Art in Carmarthen in 2003. In 2017 Buick was granted the Creative Wales Award.

This summer, the Korean Cultural Centre, London, is celebrating 130 years of Anglo-Korean relations with the exhibition Moon Jar: Contemporary Translations in Britain, showcasing work from leading UK potters Adam Buick, Jack Doherty, Akiko Hirai, Gareth Mason and Korean artist Yee Sookyung.

Adam Buick's solo exhibition of new ceramics is currently showing at Beaux Arts Bath and will be open until April 2026. To find out more about Adam Buick, please enquire below: