About Journey Lines | Coping Stones

Journey Lines | Coping Stones is a project, rooted in people and place. It explores the idea of creating personalised ceramic coping stones based on everyday routes and important journeys during the past year. Coping stones are architectural blocks that cap and protect walls from the elements. They are a familiar feature of the built environment in Stoke-on-Trent.   

In June 2021, a group of community participants from Stoke-on-Trent recorded their journeys as lines. These lines became the basis for coping stone profiles.   

This project continues the work that Sarah Fraser developed during a Crafting Futures residency.  The residency ‘Real World Ceramics’ took place in Jatiwangi, Indonesia in March 2020. This area of west Java is an area known for its production of ceramic roof tiles.  

It was a commission for the West Java West Yorkshire Co-operative Movement (Jatiwangi art Factory and Pavilion Leeds). Fraser worked with young women to develop ceramic objects which reflected some of their personal and wider social concerns. A group of young women documented their everyday journeys which became the basis for a ceramic coping stone ‘Tiara Tanah’ (Earth Crown).   

Collaborating with Tavs Jorgensen at the Centre for Fine Print Research, has developed the work further. The coping stones profiles from both of these projects have been extruded with the open source clay extruder they have developed. Extrusion is the process of pushing clay hollow shapes that forms the clay as it is pushed through it.    

This has opened out the potential for community co-production in a new way.

Exhibiting Artist

Sarah Fraser

Sarah Fraser website link.

Supported By

Journey Lines | Coping Stones  is supported by British Council, Jatiwangi Art Factory, Pavilion Leeds and Tiara Tana.