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.
Ant first encountered pottery in primary school. His teacher, Mr Wright introduced him to clay and planted the beginnings of a lifelong passion. He started out as a science teacher but gave up teaching in his late twenties after years of evening classes and moved to Lincolnshire to set up his own pottery workshop.
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.
Chris Keenan has been making pots for almost twenty-five years. Thrown and turned by hand on the wheel using Limoges porcelain, he specialises in pieces for interior spaces – designed for functional use and for decoration.
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.
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.
Adela studied the natural sciences and her work reflects a depth of observation of the natural world. Universal patterns, textures, and forms in nature, where science and art are inseparable, were Adela’s constant source of inspiration. She was particularly drawn to fragmentation and erosion, which she attempted to incorporate in her work, allowing fortuitous accidents and influences from the subconscious to enrich the process.
