Events


2026

5 June



March - April

Symposium: Material Response:  Shaping Sustainable Practices from Clay and Waste

Material Response - Expanding Periphery Materials in a research project collaboration with Sunken Studio and the University of Leeds  2025
22 August


13 September    GreenEconomy Networking Event 
Speaking about Periphery Materials 

Speaking about Periphery Materials at Sunken Studio Open Day  17-21 September
Exhibiting Periphery Materials research at Material Matters, London Design Festival2 October



22 October Attending Clay Conference: From Waste to Resource: Circular Economies For Construction Clay Spoil

Speaking at SAIL Creative Climate Conversations 2025 17-19 OctoberSelected for RDI Summer Sessions at Dartington Hall

Last Updated 05.03.26
Chris Crawford



Potter, designer and materials researcher based in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

Moving toward less extractive, lower carbon ways of designing, making and building things.

I believe that the most interesting work happens at the intersections—between art and science, craft and industry, design and engineering. 

Painting, researching, throwing, teaching, 3D printing - I am not interested in ‘staying in my lane’. 

I enjoy big challenging problems and fresh ideas.

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Bio & CV
Material Response





Material Response: shaping sustainable practices from clay and waste.
Material Response builds on work that began with Periphery Materials in 2024/25. It stemmed from conversations with Moyra Derby and Will Rea - both academics at the University of Leeds School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. We found shared interests to do with material curiosity, sustainable practices and cross-disciplinary collaboration. 


In December 2025 we  pursued an opportunity to establish a collaborative relationship that could pull together many strands and organisations with overlapping interests. Specifically the Cultural Institute at the University of Leeds runs a program called IGNITE. This program is designed to support new collaborations between University of Leeds researchers and partners from the cultural, arts, and third sector across Yorkshire.


We proposed a collaborative research program that would allow Sunken Studio to trial new experimental ways of working outside the scope of the studio's core offering of ceramics focused classes, but sharing its core values of collaboration, craft, and design thinking. With the support of Sunken Studio, funding from IGNITE presented the opportunity to see how my research could be brought into the studio more directly and explore what benefits this could have. For Moyra Derby, our Lead academic in the project, these shared interests and discussions during the application process gave rise to the new Material Cognition Research Group. This group explores  the multi-sensory and experiential aspects of making and encountering art, and the ethical and ecological aspects of material choice. 


In March 2026 we began a program of 6 weeks of collaborative co-research sessions between selected students from FAHACS, academics, studio members and other collaborators. This began with a site visit to the Mone Bros construction and demolition waste (CDW) wash plant in North Leeds which processes over 170,000 tonnes of waste per year. Mone Bros produce various engineering grade aggregates and sands from this waste which can go directly back into the building industry - representing big gains in embodied carbon and circular economy compared to virgin mined aggregates. However as with Periphery Materials this project was specifically interested in the Filter Cake Clay (FCC) produced as a byproduct of this washing process at a scale of over 40,000 tonnes a year. A mixture of fine silt and clay particles, this FCC provided a starting point for both unfired and fired exploration of this material - looking for potential artistic, design or engineering uses that go beyond the limited current uses for the material, like capping landfill sites.

Aggregate falling off the conveyor at the Mone Bros Wash Plant in North Leeds


I think the site visit to Mone Bros was an important place to start. It made real the numbers we talked about in our sessions, the scale of the CDW waste issue, and the properties of the different materials that can be recovered from that waste stream. 


We then began our experimental sessions focussed on plasticity - the special characteristic of clay allowing it to be formed and moulded into different shapes using methods like pinching, rolling and extrusion. Handling the raw FCC we found it to be of limited plasticity and so set out to plan an experiment to see if this could be adjusted.  This involved blending  FCC with other waste materials (specifically Yorkshire Sandstone masonry waste)  as well as virgin mined  Devon Ball Clay - using a systematic series of tests based on triaxial volumetric blending. 

Plasticity testing, pinch pots in a triaxial blend of FCC, Ball Clay and Masonary Waste.


We discussed experimental design and how to set our hypotheses and testing methodologies. We linked often lazily defined  ‘artistic intuition’ to the powers of methodical observation (they are one and the same) - which in turn is the same underlying process that powers scientific and experimental thinking. 


We also investigated the practicalities of dealing with waste slurries - as opposed to dry powdered materials. This enabled us to blend and work with materials in a way that reduced the dust hazards as well as energy input required to dry and grind materials. We developed a density based method for back calculating the dry loading of our various materials slurries.  Calibration tests drying small amounts of material, and a bit of spreadsheet work and  I believe we arrived at a process that is vastly more scalable and sustainable compared to dry powder preparation of materials. 

Triaxial Blends: Wood Ash, Residual Waste Glass, and FCC glazes (top left), FCC, Masonary Waste and Ball Clay (Centre)


From our triaxial blending we ran a number of qualitative and quantitative tests on the different samples. Some of these we then mapped back onto a triaxial plot - for example the map showing plasticity below, which we assessed by making small pinch pots. Firing a triaxial set of these samples to stoneware cone 7 allowed us to select 1-2 viable bodies that were both plastic enough to be used in our unfired material development, and refractory enough to be used in fired (ceramic) development. One, named ‘thirds’, was exactly 33.3% of each material tested (meaning 66.6% recycled waste). This was produced in the largest batch size and used in the majority of subsequent tests, however slight bloating at stoneware temperatures would indicate either lower firing temperatures (positive?) or a more refractory body like L or M from our triaxial would be more viable for continued stoneware use.
Mapping plasticity within our triaxial test


Thirds Clay thrown into a small bowl, early signs of bloating when fired to cone 7.

Our ‘thirds’ material represented a step forward from Periphery Materials where I found bodies made of Masonry Waste refractory enough to fire but ultimately very short and difficult to form. ‘Thirds’ clay was very plastic - extruded and even threw very nicely on the potter's wheel. Ultimately this also gave our group the opportunity to discuss how much recycled content was ‘enough’? - how can we balance a movement away from extractive non-renewable minerals - with the valuable characteristics that small amounts of those materials can bring. Ultimately these additions can make lower  impact materials more usable for more things, enabling more potential impact. Perfection vs. progress. 

We concluded our ceramic line of testing by discussing Leeds ceramic heritage, and in particular Bumantofts faience tiles. We then had a design session spent exploring the tessellation and 3d pattern opportunities that tile extrusion presets. We talked about the doorways tiles can open both as a ‘material sketchbook’ for testing, but also as a gateway into surface, 3D and spatial design - through simple modular units.

Student design sketches with extruded thirds clay tiles


On the unfired parth of testing we looked at various types of traditional earthen building techniques for inspiration. In particular we researched adobe, cob and light earth mixtures and used the binder, filler, fibre framework I learned while studying composite materials on The Material Way last year. The ‘thirds’ clay as well as raw FCC provided two potential binders whilst Yorkshire straw, Hemp Shiv and waste hair from barbers provided different fibre options to aid dry strength and reduce cracking. The other recycled aggregates produced by Mone Bros included fine and sharp sand which helped reduce the shrinkage, and increase the density and dry strength. We built timber frame screens lined with an open wire mesh (a quick, though less satisfying alternative to wood lath, or woven coppice willow) on which to test our different composite mixtures. Using ratio based mix recipes and standardised containers as a measure we could rapidly iterate through different composites, and observe their wet characteristics as well as drying performance. Ultimately we found a number of promising low to medium density composites that could provide vapour permeable and insulating infill for timber frame construction. 

Timber frame test panels for light earth and adobe infill mixes of ‘thirds’ clay and Yorkshire straw and hemp fibre.


On top of these rough fibre rich layers we then explored clay plaster mixes to produce a range of different surfaces that could form a finishing layer for our waste based composite wall system. Mostly rich in recycled sand, these mixes balanced binding capacity with low shrinkage to produce smooth top coats without the need for gypsum. They also offered for exploration of moulding and texture type finishes. Ultimately a 3 part recycled sand to 1 part recycled ‘thirds’ clay mix gave our most commercial, plaster like finish with students exploring the optimal water content and trowel techniques for the best application. 

Surface finishes inlcuding a bio based flour and linseed oil white wash paint (top)


Linking these two strands to a hypothetical wall system composed of unfired clay / fibre fill, clay plaster internal finishes and recycled clay ceramic tile cladding for the exterior gave us a concept to hang all of this materials exploration onto. It also led us naturally up the path of more refined and finished materials to a final session focused on colour. Here, we started by talking about the particularly extractive and unsustainable nature of mineral sourced colour - especially in ceramics, and then had a workshop led by natural colour researcher, artist, and Material Response Collaborator, Michaeal Lesayova.

Extracting colour from Avocado stones


In this session we explored different ways of sourcing colour, and  in particular how it can be extracted from plant and food waste. We worked with onion skins and avocado stones produced by a local cafe, supplied by one of the studio members. We experimented with how dye baths could be used in conjunction with bisc fired recycled ‘thirds’ clay tiles to add colour, and use the natural absorbency of the low fire clay to draw colour into the structure of the material. We also experimented with using these extracted dyes in a non acrylic natural paint recipe based on a linseed oil and flour base shared by Local Works Studio. These gave a range of naturally coloured bio based paints which we tested on our clay plaster screens as well as, low fired tiles. 

Dye bath natural colour on low fire tiles.


While none of these solutions would be as permanent as an acrylic synthetic paint or a glaze coloured by extracted minerals and melted into a glass - it led to some very interesting conversations around why we value permanence ? How long do we want materials to last? At what cost? What if things could change over time? What if they required maintenance and care?

Flour and Linseed oil paints, coloured with onion skin and avocado extract dyes, on low fire tiles

These conversations felt like an excellent way to complete our 6 experimental sessions. All the materials we use come with trade offs. However some of the time (most of the time) globalisation now means many of these trade offs can be offshored - out of sight out of mind. We can choose both the most durable products, and simultaneously choose to throw these away with little cost to us.


It allowed us to wrap up talking about bioregional design as an exciting and engaging constraint to work with across all scales of art and design practice. It's a simple proposition - what if we could only work with materials that came from a 20km radius? Would we reconsider materials that were previously overlooked or classified as ‘waste’? What would that do to the work we produce and the way we think about producing it? How much more local variation might be re-discovered when the nature of local materials becomes visible again in art, objects and buildings? How could this way of thinking influence the behaviour of makers and users in all aspects of their lives and bring critical awareness to the materials we have less control over - that wrap our food, or go into our laptops and mobile phones…?



Perhaps this re-engagement with materials can be a lasting output of this kind of work - not just the creation of more objects for objects sake,  in a world that doesn’t need more stuff,  but the creation of objects with local provenance and material stories that make us reconsider our values, behaviours and interaction with all material systems.



On June 5th Sunken Studio will be hosting a symposium; Material Response: Shaping sustainable practices from clay and waste. An afternoon of talks from practitioners responding to ideas around circular economy, sustainable materials and cross-disciplinary practice. We will also host a ‘research in progress’ exhibition showing work from this project and other speakers and collaborators. To register and receive updates when we announce speakers you can view the event on Eventbrite here.



Wood Ash, FCC and Residual Waste Glass glaze triaxial - further testing carried out by Will Rea





Thirds Glaze, Wood Ash, FCC and Residual Waste Glass - further testing by Will Rea.



With thanks to:

Rebecca Catterall, Director and Founder at Sunken Studio
The University of Leeds Cultural Institute, IGNITE Fund
Moyra Derby and Will Rea of the Material Cognition Research Group
Michaela Lesayova, colour researcher, artist and founder of livingwell
Steve Crossland, Technical Manager at Mone Bros