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.
Petra trained in the South East and then gained a degree at Cardiff before joining Wobage Workshops, South Herefordshire in 1995. She and her husband, Jeremy Steward, also a potter, live on the edge of the Royal Forest of Dean. They were invited to join the Wobage studios as part-time apprentices to Mick and Sheila Casson, a role they maintained until Mick’s death in 2003.
Alastair has a lifetime of experience as an artist/maker, teacher, mentor, and plantsman.
He was taught by Emmanuel Cooper, Walter Keeler, Dan Arbeid, Richard Slee, Mo Jupp, Robert Kesseler, Gillian Lowndes, and Gordon Baldwin, etc. Gillian and Gordon in particular were pivotal in transfoming his thinking and ambition.
Barbara Gittings’ smoke fired, nerikomi porcelain vessels are quiet, contemplative and sensual, as she wants anyone looking at the work to want to touch it and be drawn in.
After a long and varied career in design and printing, Judy changed direction and followed her passion for ceramics. At the age of sixty she enrolled for a 3D Craft and Design BA at a local college and graduated with a 1st Class (Hons). Judy went on to gain an MA at the Royal College of Art, specialising in Nerikomi and Kintsugi.
Taja came over to UK from his native country Japan to study oil painting and settled in Devon over 40 years ago. He was inspired by so many potters in the south west, so he started making pots using his friend’s pottery workshop. He is largely self-taught. He found that slab and coil built pottery suits him the most. He started experimenting with porcelain clay about 20 years ago after being inspired by enormous blue porcelain wall tiles at a new Japanese airport especially the water-like quality of the blue glaze.
Jitka was born in Prague. She studied medicine and worked as an anatomist. In 1985, she moved to Britain and studied ceramics at Croydon College of Art and Design and Stone Masonry at City of Bath College. She set up her studio in London with the help of a Crafts Council grant. She lives and works in Bristol.
