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.
Since leaving Camberwell College of Art in 1988, Justine has been primarily working with hand-built porcelain. Her work addresses the boundaries between function and decoration. Form is paramount to her, function is a driving motivation, but it is the aesthetics of a piece that are key to her making.
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.
Lesley was born in Lancashire, England and is based in Stoke Newington in London.
She discovered ceramics at an early age, in Australia, where the textures and colours of the landscapes and terrain greatly influenced her. She studied firstly in Australia where she gained a Diploma (Distinction) in Ceramics at Caulfield Institute of Technology in 1982.
David had no artistic or ceramic history in his family, nor did he formally study ceramics. He discovered ceramics by accident as an element in his teaching degree whilst at Bretton Hall in the late 1960s. Similarly, his work in raku was appropriately the result of a serendipitous encounter with an American raku potter in the mid-1970s. David states that due to persistence, natural talent and support from colleagues, friends, and family, especially his wife Jan, over the past 40 years he has established himself as a leading international practitioner in raku ceramics.
Jenny Southam studied Fine Art in Bristol where she developed her practice in Sculpture, gravitating towards bronze. After several years working as a sculptor and bronze-casting assistant in Gloucestershire she moved to Devon, where she embraced clay as her medium of choice. For thirty years her family, home, garden and studio has formed an integrated whole.
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.
