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.
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.
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.
Lara Scobie is an Edinburgh based ceramic artist specialising in individual slip-cast vessels and bowls made in porcelain and parian clay. Focusing on the dynamic between form and pattern her work explores the cohesive integration of drawing, surface, mark making and volume.
Lea Phillips makes a wide range high fired stoneware pottery, mostly functional plus some larger one-off pieces. All the ceramics are wheel-thrown, fired in an electric kiln and decorated with free abstract designs using vibrant colourful glazes made to her own recipes. A firm believer that oxidised firing is no barrier to interesting surfaces Lea enjoys glaze development and the challenge of combining form, colour, and pattern.
David read philosophy and literature at Warwick University. Realising the lack of jobs as a philosopher, he became a potter and taught part-time in the ceramics department at Wolverhampton University for thirty years. This allowed him the space in which to continue with his personal practice. He was awarded a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2016. David used the inquiry within his thesis to examine the question of how he could employ the language of materiality, making, and firing (particularly raku) to critically focus on issues of personal identity.
Katie studied ceramics as part of her degree in Cheltenham and went on to teach in secondary education specialising in ceramics. Drawn to working with clay from a young age and inspired by the landscape and seascape around where she lives, Katie is particularly influenced by the manmade and natural marks in the environment. She enjoys the nature of the material and the meditative quality of hand building, as well as the malleable quality of clay which retains a sense of the maker’s hand.
