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.
Rachel Grimshaw’s sculptural ceramics are about the clay itself. Focusing on its pliable, immediate, qualities, Rachel likens her pieces to photographs capturing a ‘frozen moment’ in time, her pieces are fixed in a forever gesture once fired.
Graham’s interest in ceramics began at York School of Art in the 1960s and continued at Cardiff College of Art, graduating from there in 1971.He later worked at both colleges as a ceramics technician and having retired from Cardiff (now Cardiff Metropolitan University) in 2009, Graham established a workshop in Gloucestershire.
Alastair has a lifetime of experience as an artist/maker, teacher, mentor, and plantsman.
He was taught by Emmanuel Cooper, Walter Keeler, Dan Arbeid, Richard Slee, Mo Jupp, Robert Kesseler, Gillian Lowndes, and Gordon Baldwin, etc. Gillian and Gordon in particular were pivotal in transfoming his thinking and ambition.
John has been making stoneware pottery in the North Lancashire village of Yealand Redmayne for forty years. The firing process requires a temperature of 1320c, and a smoky/reducing atmosphere in the kiln, which results in rich glaze colours and exciting unpredictable effects on the pots. Most of the pots are classically simple functional shapes, thrown on the wheel, but John occasionally alters the freshly thrown pots to produce one of the signature forms for which he is well known.
All Francis' work is thrown using stoneware clays and is reduction fired, increasingly turning to salt glaze for his desired surface. Functional pots are his main concern, pots made for use in daily life, often giving a nod towards other historical objects, not necessarily made of clay, featuring utilitarian components now ultimately defunct but repurposed as decoration. He uses a muted palette of glazes and seeks a balance between looseness and definition in his forms.
Richard grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, a city with a long history of ceramics. Richard graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996 with a BA(Hons) in Ceramics and Design, focussing on reduction firing and oriental ceramics. He set up his first pottery in south London, specialising in blue and white porcelain.
