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.
Akiko Hirai produces both practical and decorative ceramic ware that is held in private collections and museums worldwide. Her Japanese background and aesthetics strongly influence her ceramic work while her pieces are also perfectly rooted in contemporary designs.
Alasdair Neil's ideas focus on the strange beauty found in the decaying architecture of industrial wastelands. He has built up a large collection of clay and plaster moulds that he has made from the surfaces of found fragments of discarded waste. It is these textures, patterns, shapes and colours that form the thread that runs throughout his entire range of unique hand built forms
Born and raised in London, Diane graduated with a BA (Hons) in ceramics in 1988. It was during her foundation course in the 1980s that she fell in love with clay. It lit her up, and her lifelong passion began. Initially she was drawn to how immediate, tactile and responsive it was, but it was during her degree at Farnham that she discovered how truly versatile clay is as a creative medium for artistic expression.
Her work captures her imaginary life and real life, which overlap. She used to pretend to live as a ‘normal’ person in society but wildness took over the thin veneer and it consumed her. Once she started making sculpture, all those layers of pretention fell away. She was finally one whole person.
Being brought up close to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park has been a gift and an education to James from a very young age. The aesthetic of Barbara Hepworth’s work is almost ingrained in him, as though it were the basis of his consciousness of texture, proportion, line and form. After completing a foundation course at Dewsbury Art College, James spent two weeks in the ceramics department working with renowned Raku Ceramist David Roberts. He was immediately drawn to clay as a material. Later, upon graduation from Loughborough and then the Royal College of Art in 2001, James set up a studio in London for several years before returning to his native Yorkshire in 2005.
Jack has two major strands to his ceramic portfolio: hand-thrown porcelain vessels and his stoneware domestic range. Over time, he has developed and forged his own unique way of making.
With his distinctive hand-thrown porcelain vessels, Jack has honed his craft skills to working with one clay, one colouring mineral and one single firing technique. Within this simple but richly complex way of fine tuning his practice, he has found his singular creative focus. His firing technique is unique, where the space within the kiln is used creatively.
