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.
Jonathan graduated from Farnham Art School in 1974 and worked for Joe Finch at Appin Pottery in Scotland. He began making once fired domestic ware in a pale stoneware body, guided and inspired by Bernard Leach’s ‘A Potters Book’. He went on to work in porcelain and to decorate with a brush.
In 1999, Jonathan moved to East Sussex where he built a smaller kiln in a more spacious workshop. He began to experiment seriously with reduction fired lustre which had fascinated him ever since he attended a course given by the late Marjorie Clinton two years previously.
Working with clay allows Sue a secondary voice, a line of communication through form. Her work explores the fragility and hidden strength found within the natural world.
The slow repetitive hand-building techniques she uses to create her pieces offer a considered way to develop the work as each piece calmly grows. Deliberate junctions are made by breaking and re-joining the form where collars or shoulders then evolve. Surface markings are infused into the work during the making, with slips and oxides being applied throughout the drying stage. Built with a white stoneware clay body, the work may be glazed or left bare.
Despite specialising in making one-off slab-built pots during her college years, Ulla established herself as a ceramic jewellery maker for many years. She has however, returned to making individual sculptural pieces. The pots that she now makes are a playful take on classic container forms, particularly the bottle. The shapes have an animated, even anthropomorphic air about them and work well in pairs or in groups.
Gaby’s current focus is making saggar-fired, wheel-thrown pots. What originally drew her to this type of making was the interplay between the highly controlled form, and smooth, polished, surface texture of the piece on the one hand; and the ‘seemingly’ random nature of the surface marks created by smoke and metallic, chemical reactions, on the other.
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.
Jennifer Hall graduated from Cardiff Institute of Higher Education back in 1994, followed by work as a thrower and decorator for Gwili Pottery, Carmarthen. Jennifer set up her first pottery in 1997 in Buckinghamshire, later in 2001 she moved to Llanwrthwl, Powys to establish her successful studio.
