'Inevitable': Change of course for ceramicist

She worked as a live-in cook for the Duke and Duchess of York in the 1990s, and even prepared meals for the late Queen Elizabeth and King Charles when he was a mere Prince.

She made sure Formula One great Mika Hakkinen ate well on the European circuit for the Marlboro McLaren Racing Team and that Australian grand prix motorcycle legend Daryl Beattie risked his life on the track with a full stomach.

And for six years, Kate Lethlean taught aspiring professional cooks the nuts and bolts of culinary rigour at London’s prestigious Leith’s School of Food and Wine, a role that played to her strengths of patience, attention to detail and clear communication.

But after moving to Dunsborough in 2018 following many years interstate and abroad in diverse career roles, Kate has channelled her talents and energy into a reinvention that, in hindsight, “seemed inevitable.”

Pottery, clay, porcelain, ceramics… a dormant artistic sense and creative lust, combined with a lot of hard work, has seen Lethlean’s curiosity expand, bloom and magically take shape like a piece of clay on a potter’s wheel.

After four years in communications at Wilyabrup estate Fraser Gallop, Kate now calls herself a full-time ceramicist, with her own studio – Claymates – creating functional art pieces and botanically themed tableware as well as teaching from Claymates Studio on Toby Inlet.

It’s a role, she says, combining both technique and design sense – on the one hand – and “a modest talent for sharing skills and enthusiasm with others.”

“I get a lot of satisfaction from inspiring people to take on their own journey, whether its just a few hours of relaxation and discovery or potentially igniting a whole new career,” she says “as it did for me.”

“Like cooking,” she says, “with ceramics you learn fundamental skills from teachers and mentors and then move on, adapt, and express your own voice and feelings through the pieces created.”

Lethlean’s own ceramic journey began with an afternoon in 2019 with renowned Busselton potter and teacher Sally May Mills, at Claylines, “that quite literally changed the direction of my life.”

Practical work with Gary Hambleton of Commonage Pottery only reinforced her intrigue with this form of practical artistic expression.

Further tuition with renowned WA ceramicist Sandra Black at Fremantle Arts Centre tickled Lethlean’s interest in porcelain; she massaged it a little harder in 2024 with two intensive courses at Tuscany’s famed La Meridiana ceramics school and a week of one-on-one tuition with Columbian-Italian porcelain artist Martha Pachon in Faenza, Emila Romagna, Italy’s ceramics heart.

“I came home from Italy with a much clearer understanding of my own goals and passions,” says Lethlean.

“Getting Claymates – my studio – up-to-speed was one of them, so I can pass on some of the skills I’ve been fortunate enough to acquire.

“The other was a much sharper focus on the types of pieces I really want to make into the future: functional, contemporary handmade pieces.

“In a world where everything seems to come out of a factory in China, unique handmade pieces say something to me about basic human creativity. It’s not about the search for uniformity or perfection.

“It’s about the realisation of individual creativity and expression. Pieces that are truly unique.”

Kate is currently working on an exhibition for the Australian Ceramics Triennale: After 5, Before 10, producing a contemporary dining setting inspired but the works and life of pioneering 19th century botanist Georgiana Molloy.

Drawing on Georgiana’s letters, diaries and botanical specimens, the tablescape will feature porcelain dishes and tableware, candelabra, vases and exotic and native blooms hand made in porcelain.

“Ceramics and cooking share so much. You make a mess, you clean it up, it’s creative but based on science and a little bit of magic and luck. You can never exactly recreate the same thing. Each dish has its own unique character.

“I still love cookery and food, of course, but ceramics last, and have zero impact on the waistline, and I love that.”

Kate is opening Claymates Studio for the first time with her inaugural exhibition Work in Progress April 19, Easter Saturday.

Claymates is at 1110 Caves Road, Quindalup.