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.
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.
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.
His work is influenced by landscape settings, especially the wild rugged beauty of Connemara and Donegal, and the dramatic West Wales coastline. He incorporates geological elements, natural colours, as well as the marks of human activity on the landscape into his vessels. He is interested in addressing the relationship we have with the landscape.
Collecting and arranging manmade and natural forms provides Claire with great enjoyment and creative impulse for her making. Crucial to her creative process is her discipline of drawing and keeping a continuous sketchbook of ideas and studies. Sculptural forms have emerged through extensive research and exploration of alternative hand-building techniques. Smoky and painterly surfaces envelop her ceramic forms and are integral to the whole.
Making in her hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, Laura draws from the creative heritage and ambition of the pioneering potters who made the city famous. Her contemporary forms echo the grandeur of 18th century ceramics, she has long admired. Thrown in porcelain, each piece is a unique ‘sketch’ in clay, carefully turned and refined to reveal the precise form.
Christine-Ann trained at Harrow School of Art and Technology with Mick Casson (1971-73), then worked with David Leach. In London, she started her own workshop as a member of the Barbican Arts Group (1975-83) and in 1976 became a Selected Member of the Craftsmen Potters Association and the Society of Designer Craftsmen. She now works from her home, a converted chapel near Frome in Somerset.
