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.
Russell has always been a maker. He studied art through college before enrolling - almost on a whim - on a Foundation Degree in Ceramics. Alongside his creative path, he has had a varied working life: he is a qualified carpenter and has worked as a firefighter, stonemason, picture framer, florist and pizza chef, with a number of smaller jobs in between. For the past ten years he has worked as a full-time potter, leaving the retained fire service around four years ago.
Working with clay allows Sue a secondary voice, a line of communication through form. Her work explores the fragility and hidden strength found within the natural world. The slow repetitive hand-building techniques she uses to create her pieces offer a considered way to develop the work as each piece calmly grows. Deliberate junctions are made by breaking and re-joining the form where collars or shoulders then evolve. Surface markings are infused into the work during the making, with slips and oxides being applied throughout the drying stage. Built with a white stoneware clay body, the work may be glazed or left bare.
Fiona’s focus is mainly on hand built ceramic vessels, with multiple layered surfaces. They combine traditional and contemporary processes. Pieces are first usually coiled or slab built, then painted and printed with coloured slips.
Mark makes black and white domestic slipware using a combination of traditional craft and modern industrial ceramic techniques, in a contemporary take on Staffordshire slipware. Currently, he is developing his tableware and large functional work into sculptural one-off pieces. These include slab built, stacked designs for sculptures which depend on gravity to interlock. He is also experimenting with platinum lustre transfers to exploit the differing reflective qualities of glazed and lustred surfaces.
Ruth's pots are built using sheets of soft clay, her dedication to the art and process of making, from construction to firing, has given rise to very particular work. Within this particularity lies a thought -provoking tension. While the pots are structured with great intention and tailored to contain space, their formal concerns are softened by an underlying sensuousness, best experienced by the all -important sense of touch. The vapours that caress each piece in the kiln create an inextricable link between the form and the smooth, rich and complex tones that articulate and enhance the pots' surfaces.
As a child, Emmanuel grew up surrounded by the traditions and perfumes of Sardinia, a land rich in marine life. Her work is influenced by her native culture with its music and folk-costumes of luxuriant materials adorned with precious jewels. She was captivated by the gentle flowing of the living creatures found in the seabed, particularly by coral and the variety of porous sponges.