The project consists of Iwami Shinsuke, Mashiko, Japan, Ann-Charlotte Ohlsson, Jesper L.Larsen and I, Anne Mette Hjortshøj.

As an apprentice, working with Phil Rogers, it was an obvious part of daily life in the studio, to collect and test various clays, woodashes and rock to use as raw materials.

I adopted this curiousity in my own work.

In 2008 I met my husband Jesper. He knows our island geology and history very well and became a big part of my expeditions to explore this Bornholm paradise of clay and rock.

From then on we established a shared goal of trying to understand the history of rawmaterials, in order to understand where materials were collected and what they were used for. 

With this information I now collect clay and rock to use it in small amounts and in various ways in my own work.

In 2011 I met potter Iwami Shinsuke from Mashiko, Japan.

We were both invited to participate in the International Teabowl Festival in Mungyeong, South Korea.

Iwami Shinsuke has a deep and long interest in this subject, not only in his own work.

For almost a decade, as a potter, he has been part of a project in Cambodia, about finding a modern way with the local materials to keep an old tradition of pottery skills alive.

We invited Iwami Shinsuke to Bornholm in 2016 for an AiR at Agregård.

This became the start of an ongoing exchange between two potters and between Bornholm and Mashiko.

We call it Bornholm (/Mashiko) Wild Clay Research Project.