Contemporary Ceramics gallery and shop exhibits the greatest collectable names in British ceramics along with the most up and coming artists of today. Our distinguished makers are all carefully selected members of the Craft Potters Association.
All of our makers are members of the Craft Potters Association and each of them have a story to tell.
Elly graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004. Since then, she has exhibited in numerous galleries and craft fairs. She produces work from her garden studio in Hertford.
Elly’s work is hand-built using slabs of clay with multiple slips, textural marks and impressions applied during the making process. Glaze is also applied and sometimes rubbed back, then the pieces are high fired.
Suzanne began working with clay while accompanying her husband during their years living in the Middle East in the 1960s and 70s. She came to make clay her home ground and something she could take with her wherever she lived.
She discovered Oribe ware – Japanese tea ceramics associated with the Kaiseki meal and tea ceremony – whose glazes and playful geometric decoration greatly influenced her aesthetic. She ultimately decided to import English porcelain clay so she would have continuity wherever she worked and for the same reasons travelled with a small electric kiln.
Ikuko Iwamoto is a London-based Japanese artist who uses porcelain to create eccentric table-top pieces and sculpture. Her fundamental inspiration comes from intricate and fragile looking structures, and odd forms found in the microscopic world.
Sandy Brown has been making ceramics now for over 50 years and is internationally known. After being introduced to ceramics in Japan, Sandy learned there that pots can be dynamic, exciting, free, and irregular. Moreover, they can be loved and used for those qualities.
Clive Bowen was born in Cardiff in 1943. Initially studying painting and etching at Cardiff College of Art from 1960 to 1964, Clive went on to train as an apprentice with Michael Leach at the Yelland Pottery in North Devon from 1965 until 1969. He worked alongside Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge before setting up his own pottery in 1971 when he bought a small agricultural property at Shebbear, near Holsworthy in North Devon and set up a workshop in the former farm outhouses.
Chris was born in 1959. His introduction to clay began at adult education classes in Islington. He went on to study Sculpture at St. Martins School of Art, London and graduated in 1982. Chris has moved around the country over the last decades. He helped set up the Chocolate Factory studios in Hackney, London in 1995. In 2006, he moved to Argyll, Scotland to set up another pottery. By 2009, Chris relocated to Cumbria setting up a new pottery in a converted farm building.
