My ode china

Potters aren't ordinary people. To make a living from their work, they have to be 100 per cent dedicated to their craft. And it helps if their homes include a kiln or two. Rupert Spira's home is a potter's paradise. He has collectors as far afield as Hong Kong and New York, as well as the Sainsbury Institute closer to home in Norwich. He has a show opening this week at the temple of good taste, known simply as Egg, in Knightsbridge, London, showcasing a collection of new work. The centrepiece is a small series of Poem Bowls, large-scale pots which have been painstakingly inscribed with one of Spira's own poems about consciousness.

One of the bowls in question has pride of place in the middle of a round table in the potter's dining room, in his 17th-century home in a tiny hamlet in Shropshire. Just five houses surround a church and graveyard. It could be a film set. This little corner of English countryside is seemingly unspoilt, unchanged for centuries.

When Spira and his wife Caroline first saw the house it was covered in pebble dash, and the fireplaces and original features inside were all boarded up. 'It looked horrible,' he says, and consequently it was on the market for a long time. There were also barns at the back - just waiting to be made into a studio. Suspecting there was treasure buried underneath, the Spiras began unboarding the fireplaces and stripping the place back to its original state.

It was even better than they thought it would be. The huge, stone fireplaces were all intact, along with other details, including one room with its original hand-stencilled walls, something you would more commonly expect to find in an Italian farmhouse. The work is ongoing. The couple recently uncovered another original beamed wall - originally the front of the house - when they started building a long, galley office space.

Since 1996, when they moved in, they have sympathetically pared back rather than painstakingly restored the house. 'We wanted to have everything in keeping with the period of the house, but not preserve things for preservation's sake,' says Spira. 'It is not by any means a conservation exercise. I love the light and space in the house.'

The result is at once modern, rustic and austere. Shabby chic, as he calls it. The walls are left simply plastered, and the house's grand oak floorboards just polished and waxed once a year. The wax builds up and they get better each time. The boards in one of the guest rooms were so damaged that the builders recommended replacing them. But Spira persevered with the wax, and although still wonderfully gnarled, they look like they have at least another 400 years in them.

Materials for kitchen units, the sink surround (topped off with a selection of Spira cups, beakers and dishes) and the odd door have been recycled from wood found in the barns and out buildings. Even the oak kitchen table was part of the original structure of the house. It was a shelf in the pantry, very long and very thin, ideal for storing farmhouse produce, such as cheese and meats. At first, it was rested on builders' trestles temporarily, but the builder donated the trestles to the cause and the shelf has become an unusual kitchen table. A recent addition to the kitchen are the colourful abstract paintings by the Spiras' three-year-old son Mathew.

The cavernous barns at the back of the house are still a work in progress. When the couple first moved in, they were a mess of mud, cobbles and concrete. There were no ceilings and the cattle stalls were complete with mangers. The house was part of a working farm until the 90s. It is now a working pottery. Spira began using the barns two weeks after moving in, at the same time putting in floors, windows, kilns and blasting the place clean. 'It will never be complete,' he says.

His studio has a small, very neat working space in a corner of the room, with a window so he can see what's going on in the house. There's a wheel and his tools, all lined up ready for action, and a Roberts radio, wrapped up in plastic so it doesn't seize up with clay. Everything has a fine layer of plaster on it. On the shelves next to his workstation there are pots waiting to be glazed and fired.

For his Poem Bowls, the tiny words are painstakingly scratched into the ceramic. At first glance, it looks like surface decoration, but when you get closer, you realise these are actually words and sentences. 'They are quite difficult to read,' he says. 'A little bit like a jigsaw puzzle. As you look, a phrase or sentence will slowly emerge. The meaning of the poem is contained in every line. The process of exploring the poem is also about exploring the bowl itself.'

Each bowl takes several days to write on. 'It is tremendously exacting and you have to hold it and write at the same time. It's very awkward and uncomfortable and takes intense concentration.' It's exhausting work, so there won't be too many Poem Bowls coming off the production line. Needless to say, those that do will be for serious collectors only.

It is just two weeks before Spira's exhibition and the work is beginning to form an orderly queue for the kiln. Simple shelves, made from broomsticks and wood, are bowing under the weight of the fragile ceramics. As each piece is ready, Spira will try it out in the house, placing it on a mossy green chest in the dining room, or on a sunny window ledge so he can see the work in context. You can't imagine the pieces having a better environment than these plaster walls, stone floors and roughly finished surfaces. I wonder if he ever regrets parting with a piece. He shakes his head. There's always a new one waiting in the kiln.

· Rupert Spira's Poem Bowls will be on show at Egg, 36 Kinnerton Street, London SW1 (020 7235 9315) from 3-20 July.

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