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 left art school in 1970 and dug trenches for gas pipes for a living. Later, through his college friend’s brother (who was a potter) John worked for David Frith in North Wales. He found the discipline hard, but it has stood him in good stead ever since.
Doug works in red earthenware clay, the pots simply decorated, with appliqué decoration or sgraffito, using a basic palette of traditional slips that are made from natural raw materials. The majority of his pots are thrown on the wheel with some press moulded dishes, decorated with freely trailed lines.
Duncan’s fascination with clay began as a child in his parents’ garden. The colour, smell and malleability of the earth led him to discover at school the transformation of clay by heat into a permanent object. As a teenager, Duncan was captivated by seeing his teacher throwing a pot on a kick-wheel, his bedroom posters were images of communist revolutionary heroes and 20th-century studio pottery.
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.
Sasha Wardell has been working in bone china since 1982. Her formal training in ceramics included both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and industrial training secondments to L’Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs, Limoges, France, and the Royal Doulton design studio, Stoke on Trent, UK.
An industrial approach to the traditional bone china manufacturing process has strongly influenced the way in which Sasha presently works, reflecting her fascination for methods and materials which present a challenge. It is for this reason that bone china, with all its idiosyncrasies, has remained her favourite material.
In his youth Peter collected (mainly damaged) Chinese Kangxi and 18th Century European porcelain, regularly visiting Portobello and Bermondsey Market at 6am. His making came later, but is influenced by the pieces he bought, studied, and has loved over the years. These pots have of course been themselves influenced by earlier ceramic, silver, and pewter forms.
