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.
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.
Claire creates decorative smoke-fired pots. She chooses to use porcelain due to its strong resistance to wild temperature changes during the smoke-firing process. Her pots are not functional nor suitable for holding water due to the porous quality of the unglazed burnished clay which is necessary for smoke-firing.
There was a time when Sarah’s work referenced landscape more directly.
Landscape is still pivotal for her, but now in a more internal, abstracted and oblique way.
The clay structure is the earthy foundation, the surface marks, colours and textures are
transient moments of weather and light, season and time.
Jane trained at Camberwell College of Art and at the Royal College of Art and has won several awards for her work including the Wedgwood Scholarship for surface design.
Working across a range of making methods; throwing, jolleying, casting and hand-building, pieces are designed to stand alone or as part of a set. Colour plays a central role in Jane’s work and she is greatly inspired by patterns found in nature and landscape, notably in France the Caribbean and the Isle of Wight.
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.
Matthew’s work explores the links between ceramics and geology and place, making pieces entirely from geological samples that he has collected from specific locations around the country, and that illustrate the ceramic qualities inherent in these materials.
