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.
As a child, Jon loved drawing and messing about with mud. He and his brother and friends spent many joyful years roaming and exploring on the waste ground of empty housing plots. The exposed seams of soft yellow clay they discovered was perfect for making ‘weapons’ - squashed balls of clay on the ends of sticks. Although childhood has long passed, the activity has informed and inspired his approach to ceramic practice and his educational/community engagement work.
Chris trained in stage design at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, and after settling in the UK, built a successful career in the theatre, designing, writing and directing. In 1983, he moved to Devon and it was here that he fell in love with clay. His first studio was one that he and his partner built in their back-garden and he began to produce thrown tableware on a homemade Leach wheel.
Maria's early creative training and work was in graphic design at a time when the industry was changing from drawing boards to computers. As her work became more computer based she realised she missed using her hands and making things, that realisation led to ceramics, initially experimenting in a shed in her garden, but later to an MA in ceramic design at Bath Spa University. Since graduating she has exhibited nationally and internationally and now works from her studio in Frome.
All bowls Sara Moorhouse makes are thrown on a wheel using white stoneware clay or porcelain. The banded bowls are then turned and bisque fired before being returned to the wheel and hand painted with underglaze colour. The Colourblock series are turned and then the lines drawn on using a laser level, which are then taped and hand painted. The white porcelain bowls are handed carved either on or off the wheel, depending on the arrangement.
Porcelain, with its fine texture, purity and whiteness, allows Peter to explore relationships between form and surface in a way that is more rewarding than with any other clay. Wheel-thrown vessel forms offer infinite opportunities for subtle variations, but his particular concern, while attempting to achieve harmony and balance in the work, is to express his feelings for the natural world through the positive radiation of light and colour.
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.
