Jacqueline Poncelet is as much a child of her time as Glenys Barton and yet another type of child entirely. In her flat, dressed in a cashmere sweater and pink skirt covered in Tom and Jerry figures, she is seen in what Glenys considers her “controlled” environment. Here she lives surrounded by surprising objects; plastic Disney characters, pieces of Thirties pottery, bird-infested ceramic planters, cottage objects of a particular, quaint variety. She has little to say about her work. Let it speak for itself. At most one is met with an enigmatic smile or a certain gentle acquiescence. On the wall there is a half completed mural of very exquisitely drawn spring flowers and butterflies. “No, I don’t draw very much,” she says.
Her first pieces were stoneware and she found that she was doing more and more carving of these. She turned to bone-china quite naturally as a much more responsive vehicle for this type o f technique. “ I have always used industrial techniques,” she says, “even at Wolverhampton.”
And who can she think of who has influenced her more than anyone else ? The answer is a while in coming: “The mould-maker at Wolverhampton”. “A superb technician,” says Glenys. “A nice man . . . a real Stoke character,” says Jacqui. And then they both giggle at the thought o f how he would react if he knew what a vast influence he had exercised on both of them.
Casting all her pieces to begin with, Jacqui then proceeds to carve their surfaces. Sometimes she works for as long as two days simply whittling away the surface of a particular piece. “The problem is this very fine white dust,” she says. “At one time I even tried working in a mask.”
In the workshop in St Pancras, dirt is the great enemy. They wage a constant battle against the insidious London grime and it seems that they are winning. Everything is white; the medium they work in, the walls, the woodwork and even their hands. The atmosphere that characterises both of them is serious, intense and dedicated. Both are under thirty and yet one is left with a feeling that they have gone a long way already. When asked whose work she has been most influenced by, Jacqueline says after a moment, “ I suppose it’s a dreadful thing to say, but . . . no one’s.” This is followed by a hand-over-the mouth, little-girl giggle of outrage. The mould-maker at Wolverhampton, that amazing anonymous man, can take a lot of credit.