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.
Fiona’s focus is mainly on hand built ceramic vessels, with multiple layered surfaces. They combine traditional and contemporary processes. Pieces are first usually coiled or slab built, then painted and printed with coloured slips.
Katie studied ceramics as part of her degree in Cheltenham and went on to teach in secondary education specialising in ceramics. Drawn to working with clay from a young age and inspired by the landscape and seascape around where she lives, Katie is particularly influenced by the manmade and natural marks in the environment. She enjoys the nature of the material and the meditative quality of hand building, as well as the malleable quality of clay which retains a sense of the maker’s hand.
Annabel was born in Germany and spent several years of her childhood in Egypt before coming to England in 1956. She discovered clay at Farnham Art School on Saturday morning classes in the early 1960s. After leaving school in 1967, she attended Winchester Art School, where she was introduced to conceptual art and concrete poetry, and then Croydon College of Art. She went on to gain a BA(Hons) in Sociology and a PhD in Lesbian History at Essex University, then introduced and taught Lesbian Studies at Birkbeck College for two years. In her early 40s, she returned to her first love of clay, as one of the initial students on the City Lit Ceramics Diploma course in 1989.
Ali Tomlin creates wheel thrown porcelain. Focusing on the smooth, white surface the quality of porcelain for making clean, elegant shapes creates a canvas for her careful decoration, adding colours and marks she creates her well known range of contemporary ceramics.
Hiro was born in Fukushima, Japan. Due to her father’s work commitments, Hiro had a peripatetic childhood. The constants in her life were her grandmother and being close to nature. However, she was dismayed later on to find that the traditional old buildings from her childhood walks with her grandmother had been knocked down. Driven by sadness and nostalgia at the loss of her childhood environment/world in Japan, Hiro creates a link between the present and the past from her memories and imagination.
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.