I know I’ve recently talked about another Branwen figure which has returned to us and is also on display in our museum, but this piece is a lot older and very different in style. This Branwen perfectly illustrates the original and unique things my father began making when he first decided to become an artist. To us now she may look a little odd compared to the figures most Grogg collectors are aware of but personally I find her fascinating. My father was influenced by many people …. Picasso, Marc Chagal and Jacob Epstein amongst many and this influence can be seen in this unique handmade piece.
The choice of terracotta is unusual, and it makes this piece very rare. Dad quickly moved onto using a buff stoneware which was easier to glaze although terracotta is a beautiful clay to model with. As I have said Dad had no experience with these materials and he gleaned as much as he could from library books. Finding books on ceramics in those days wouldn’t have been easy so my father experimented a lot and learned from his mistakes. He even built his own kiln and tried to use the household gas supply to fire it up. In the end he only managed to gas himself and luckily there were no explosions but somehow my parents managed to find the money to buy a small electric kiln, and the process became a lot safer.
Dad would have hand built this piece probably using the coil technique, building it up coil by coil as the clay hardens. When it was finished it would have been fired in the kiln to around 800 degrees and then glazed and fired again at a higher temperature.
I can remember going with Dad to check the temperature of the kiln which was done by spying through a hole in the kiln wall to see if the temperature cones had melted. Once they had you knew the correct temperature had been reached and the kiln was turned off. Even then you were never certain what was going to appear once the kiln was cool but it was exciting waiting to see what colours the glazes produced.
The subject matter was inspired by the Mabinogion story of Branwen who trained a starling to send a message to her brother Bran the giant who rescued her from her imprisonment in Ireland. My father wasn’t phased by the rejection he received when people saw his early work, in fact it seemed to drive him on, but I suppose we can understand why the public found it difficult to understand what Dad was trying to do.
Looking back it’s amazing to me how one person’s desire to do something different with his life has affected us all here and changed our lives in the process.
