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.
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.
Dan Kelly trained at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts where Colin Pearson was an initial influence, encouraging him to develop his throwing technique. His stoneware pots are defined by the way he manipulates them - cutting and reshaping by hand.
Inspired by her grandmother’s Willow Pattern collection, Rhian Malin continues the long historic tradition of hand-painting porcelain with cobalt-blue decoration. Her elegant wheel-thrown porcelain vessels are the chosen surface, created to stretch this tradition into the 21st Century.
For this new exhibition, Jane will be showing a group of hemispherical double walled bowls mixed with different organic and man-made materials collected randomly, each a metaphor for memory and words. Using combinations of press moulding, coiling and slabbing processes before burnishing the surface, her pieces are then low fired and then refined with sandpaper followed by a higher temperature firing.
Angela has been working in bone china since 1991 using traditional slip casting techniques: designing her own models, making plaster moulds, and finally slipcasting translucent pieces. Conventional forms, vessels, bowls and plates retain both their functional identity but also serve as a natural canvas for decoration. Her work develops in series mostly inspired by nature; depending on the decoration each series has its own identity.
Taja came over to UK from his native country Japan to study oil painting and settled in Devon over 40 years ago. He was inspired by so many potters in the south west, so he started making pots using his friend’s pottery workshop. He is largely self-taught. He found that slab and coil built pottery suits him the most. He started experimenting with porcelain clay about 20 years ago after being inspired by enormous blue porcelain wall tiles at a new Japanese airport especially the water-like quality of the blue glaze.