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.
Agalis Manessi is a ceramic artist working from studios in London and Corfu, where she was born. After studying ceramics at the Central School of Art & Design, she was inspired by the teachings of Gordon Baldwin, Eileen Nisbett and Dan Arbeid who encouraged her enthusiasm for the plastic qualities of terracotta clay. After graduation she set up a studio in Hackney where she was a founding member of Broadway Ceramics and taught in further education. In 2018 she relocated her studio to Kennington in south London.
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.
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.
Gaby trained in Ceramics at Goldsmiths College and established her studio in 1982 with the help of a Crafts Council Setting-up Grant. She has exhibited widely in the UK, Europe and America, and China, and her work is represented worldwide in private and public collections.
David had no artistic or ceramic history in his family, nor did he formally study ceramics. He discovered ceramics by accident as an element in his teaching degree whilst at Bretton Hall in the late 1960s. Similarly, his work in raku was appropriately the result of a serendipitous encounter with an American raku potter in the mid-1970s. David states that due to persistence, natural talent and support from colleagues, friends, and family, especially his wife Jan, over the past 40 years he has established himself as a leading international practitioner in raku ceramics.
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.
