Unique ceramics thrown in a Surf Coast woolshed

A little over two years ago, Surf Coast local Anna Skermer walked into a ceramics class searching for a hobby between lockdowns. She walked out with a passion, and a new project.

“I pretty much walked out with a wheel because I was so obsessed with it,” Skermer said.

“I just took to it like a duck to water.

“And I thought; ‘If I go into another lockdown, I want to have this’.”

What started as a hobby has quickly became a side hustle, and Skermer is looking to make it something more.

Now, Skermer shapes ceramic pieces in an old, abandoned woolshed on the Surf Coast hobby farm where she lives with her partner, Simon.

“I kept it going because it was just a good space,” she said.

“I set up the wheel out in the woolshed and I found I was going out there whenever I had a bit of a lull in work or on weekends, and into the evening, I just kept making things.”

 

The couple both work from home, and have embraced everything about the hobby farm lifestyle, from surfing, to motor biking, riding, to cooking and gardening, and now, ceramics.

“I grew up in country Victoria on a sheep farm. I’ve always been a little bit connected to nature, but in interior design and before that in costume design, I was in Melbourne.

“So I moved back to the Surf Coast four or five years ago and ended up moving from Jan Juc to a small hobby farm.

“I kind of went full circle to the farm life.”

 

 

Skermer has begun selling the pieces to local cafes and at a small scale, putting more and more into building her business.

“[It began] having pieces that people were interested in, it started with friends and family, and then even giving them as gifts to give to mates that you’ve made yourself has so much more meaning to it that something that can be bought or sourced.

“I was still having them fired and using the studio in Geelong as a bit of a base, working with other ceramicists, and get a bit more of a feel for it.

“And now I’m trying to set up a studio with a kiln and the glazing side of it.”

 

Skermer has worked as an interior designer for almost 20 years, and for the past 10 has run a successful business, Pipkorn Kilpatrick, with good friend and fellow designer Jane Kilpatrick.

“I still work full time in interior design,” she said.

“The good thing about it is it does change a bit day to day.”

 

Skermer said this leaves her time to work on her ceramics in every spare moment.

Her success in interior design sings of her natural creativity and effortless style, a style that fluently translates into her ceramic pieces.

“We work with designs that work through the age, not that clients would get tired of after years and want to change, but something they can build on and grown with and something that’s not a throw away,” she said.

“Making it all work, it’s a project, going back to that timeless classic, wanting it to last into the ages.

“We’ve become a very throwaway society.”

 

In both ceramics and interior design, Skermer said she aimed to create something timeless and aesthetic.

The difference between the two, she said, is that in her ceramics she had the freedom to express her ideas from a blank slate, with complete creative freedom.

“Interior design is a collaboration with the client, and that’s what keeps our projects all so different from each other.

“It’s to suit that client, their lifestyle, their taste, their personality, it’s not for us to be so strict in telling people how they should live, but they are very much involved with the outcome, with visual they come to us with images of what they do and they don’t like.

“And it’s the same with ceramics I guess, but it’s a bit more organic and free. It’s a bit more of a creative organic outlet.

“I’ll go in to make 20 cups because a café is interested in 20 cups but I’ll come out with also five vases that are completely different.”

 

Her inspiration comes from everything from the materials she works with in interior design to the colours she comes across on the farm.

“I can get inspiration from anywhere from the colours nature can provide to even some of the finishes and marbles and colours I see in the materials we use for work, the marbles and stones and paint colours,” she said.

“It’s almost just trying to experiment a bit and try a few different things.

“It can be as simple as adding one final touch of colour that can bring so much difference to a piece.

“And the unpredictability of seeing what the firing process does, experimenting with different clays.

“Just experimenting with the clays that have a bit more iron in it, they come out with these incredible earthy spots and a rawness and roughness to them, or the more perfect stoneware.

“There’s no rulebook. It’s just going with what you feel is right at the time. There’s a lot of different pieces coming out at the end of each firing.”

 

Looking to the future, Skermer hopes to make ceramics more central to her life and work, while keeping the creative freedom of the art alive.

“I was gifted a kiln, and I’m yet to set up and get that side of things rolling,” she said.

“Now I’m trying to set up a studio with a kiln and the glazing side of it.

“I still take [ceramic pieces] into Studio Made to get it fired and to glaze it in there, but that’s on the cards and I’d like to focus on that.”

To find Skermer’s work, and keep up to date with her business ventures follow her on Instagram @anna.skermer

To follow her interior design journey, head to pipkornkilpatrick.com.au.