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.
Jonathan graduated from Farnham Art School in 1974 and worked for Joe Finch at Appin Pottery in Scotland. He began making once fired domestic ware in a pale stoneware body, guided and inspired by Bernard Leach’s ‘A Potters Book’. He went on to work in porcelain and to decorate with a brush.
In 1999, Jonathan moved to East Sussex where he built a smaller kiln in a more spacious workshop. He began to experiment seriously with reduction fired lustre which had fascinated him ever since he attended a course given by the late Marjorie Clinton two years previously.
Sue’s multidisciplinary conceptual practice comprises stand-alone pieces, installation, film and tableware, collectively defined by a distinct language. Current work is rooted in traditional techniques, thrown forms made on the wheel, firing in real flame kilns and using natural wood ash deposits and the reduction flame to add unpredictable embellishment.
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.
Ian was born in Birmingham - a city famous in its past for guns, cars, motorbikes and jewellery: a city of makers. He studied ceramics at the Central School of Art, London. His teachers included Gordon Baldwin and Dan Arbeid who encouraged skills and making of all types, from hand-building to industrial techniques as possible means of artistic expression. Ian’s own teaching and exhibiting in the UK, Europe and the Far East has provided opportunities to produce work as a response to different places and cultures.
Chloë is based in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. After studying Fine Art Ceramics (BA Hons.), achieving a Higher Diploma in Art Education, and completing her MA in History of Art and Architecture at the University of Limerick, Chloë moved to Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny to complete the Design and Crafts Council’s two-year pottery skills training course.
All Francis' work is thrown using stoneware clays and is reduction fired, increasingly turning to salt glaze for his desired surface. Functional pots are his main concern, pots made for use in daily life, often giving a nod towards other historical objects, not necessarily made of clay, featuring utilitarian components now ultimately defunct but repurposed as decoration. He uses a muted palette of glazes and seeks a balance between looseness and definition in his forms.
