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.
Many years ago, Harriet was inspired by an article by Dick Lehmann about carbon trap glazes. She has been exploring this intriguing glaze ever since. She believes that all the potters who work with carbon trap seek different qualities and achieve quite distinctive effects even though they may use the same recipe and fire to the same temperature in the same kind of kiln. The glaze is unusually responsive to the atmosphere in the kiln and even to the weather as it dries before firing.
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.
Marcio Mattos became fascinated with clay after seeing an exhibition of tea ceremony bowls at the V&A museum many years ago. He went on to train at Richmond College and later for a degree at Goldsmiths College. He presently creates one-off sculptural vessels and plaques in black stoneware and porcelain paper clay with dry-glazed textural surfaces and brushed decoration.
The passage of time and change observed in urban and rural landscapes has always been central to the themes Dennis explores in his work. The process of archaeology and its concern with time and layers has also greatly influenced the way in which he expresses his ideas. Architectural fragments, marks on the landscape, multi-layered and over painted surfaces, have all influenced the way he works in clay.
Sue originally trained as a sculptor at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London gaining a degree in Fine Art (Sculpture). First working in wood and metal, she discovered clay in the late nineties.
A chance encounter with a South African potter led to Sue’s fascination with burnished and smoked African and South American pots. Then in 1997, she attended a transformative course in Greece run by ceramic artist Alan Bain. There she began hand-building pots, working with terra sigillata slips, acquiring burnishing skills, and being introduced to pit firing.
Simon spent his childhood fishing, drawing, and painting (usually creatures with sharp teeth). His first experience with clay was at the age of nine, throwing on the wheel under the guiding hands of Tessa Oates at Chipstead Craft Studios, later sculpting and modelling. He entered the world of graphic design and illustration, working in London design studios for a decade and then from his home in Kent.
