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.
Clive Bowen was born in Cardiff in 1943. Initially studying painting and etching at Cardiff College of Art from 1960 to 1964, Clive went on to train as an apprentice with Michael Leach at the Yelland Pottery in North Devon from 1965 until 1969. He worked alongside Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge before setting up his own pottery in 1971 when he bought a small agricultural property at Shebbear, near Holsworthy in North Devon and set up a workshop in the former farm outhouses.
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.
Irena Sibrijns has been a potter for over thirty years. Inspired by an avid interest in 20th century English decorative arts tradition Irena creates exquisite, and entirely unique, ornamental and functional pieces with equal enthusiasm.
Rob was born in Doncaster in 1945. He first became interested in pottery and art whilst at school, going on to further education at Leeds College of Art. Robert then studied sculpture at Cardiff College graduating in 1968, before finishing his education with an Art Teacher Training Course at Hornsey College. Rob returned to the pottery he had enjoyed while at school and the decision to become a potter was a flash of inspiration which he has never regretted. Since making this decision in 1970, he has made countless pots, set up workshops and taught ceramics in the UK and France.
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.
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
