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.
John has been making stoneware pottery in the North Lancashire village of Yealand Redmayne for forty years. The firing process requires a temperature of 1320c, and a smoky/reducing atmosphere in the kiln, which results in rich glaze colours and exciting unpredictable effects on the pots. Most of the pots are classically simple functional shapes, thrown on the wheel, but John occasionally alters the freshly thrown pots to produce one of the signature forms for which he is well known.
Moira is based in a small village on the edge of the Blackwater Estuary Coast. After a career in Marketing Communications, Moira studied 3D art specialising in ceramics at Colchester Adult College gaining a City and Guilds Diploma.
Moira’s vessels are contemplative and tactile, and strongly influenced by sense of place - the soft Essex saltings landscape, the quality of East Coast light, and the fleeting and ever-changing nature of life between the tidelines.
Duncan’s fascination with clay began as a child in his parents’ garden. The colour, smell and malleability of the earth led him to discover at school the transformation of clay by heat into a permanent object. As a teenager, Duncan was captivated by seeing his teacher throwing a pot on a kick-wheel, his bedroom posters were images of communist revolutionary heroes and 20th-century studio pottery.
Angela has been working in ceramics for over 50 years. Her first experience of clay was at after school class, leading to a Foundation Arts Course in Derby, then a BA in Wolverhampton, and an MA at Royal College of Art London. The latter two degree courses were very open-ended and encouraged exploration of other materials and a wide variety of working methods. This suited Angela as she has always been interested in both industrial production processes and sculptural techniques.
Tessa trained in Ceramics at Goldsmiths College, London 1981-84. On leaving college she developed a method of sawdust firing for surfaces that were high fired and internally glazed making it possible for them to hold water. Her vessel ranges are both hand-built and slip-cast, sculptural in form but always functional.
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.
