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.
Richard Phethean is a long established professional potter whose work has been exhibited and collected widely across the UK and Europe. He is a Fellow of, and recently retired as Chair of the Craft Potters Association, a member of the Cornwall Crafts Association and of the Penwith Society of Artists.
Peter Smith was once a research chemist before turning his hand to ceramics and starting a pottery in Cornwall. He aims to combine the feel of traditional earthenware with contemporary ideas. The basic form is often thrown on the wheel in a heavily grogged brown clay.
Since 2000 Owen Thorpe has been producing ‘families’ of pots using recurring themes and he has been making bowls and plates with inscriptions. All his work is made using a soft stoneware, high fired with occasional further enamel firings.
Helen Beard is a potter and illustrator and a people watcher at heart. She studied at the Edinburgh College of Art. After graduating, Helen was an apprentice with Edmund de Waal in London. She set up her own studio in 2004 in the London borough of Islington where she makes, draws, designs and sometimes teaches.
Sean's love of slipware first began whilst attending the studio pottery course at Harrow College of Art in the late 1980s. Now 30 years and three workshops later he is still making slipware. Since 2007, after moving from London, Sean has been working in an old converted stone barn in Southern Brittany, France.
Chris trained in stage design at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, and after settling in the UK, built a successful career in the theatre, designing, writing and directing. In 1983, he moved to Devon and it was here that he fell in love with clay. His first studio was one that he and his partner built in their back-garden and he began to produce thrown tableware on a homemade Leach wheel.