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.
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.
Jane Hamlyn's life as a full-time professional potter began in 1975. She chose to work in salt-glaze, an unpredictable technique with a short history and undiscovered potential.
Sandy Brown has been making ceramics now for over 50 years and is internationally known. After being introduced to ceramics in Japan, Sandy learned there that pots can be dynamic, exciting, free, and irregular. Moreover, they can be loved and used for those qualities.
Moira is based in a small village on the edge of the Blackwater Estuary Coast. After a career in Marketing Communications, Moira studied 3D art specialising in ceramics at Colchester Adult College gaining a City and Guilds Diploma.
Moira’s vessels are contemplative and tactile, and strongly influenced by sense of place - the soft Essex saltings landscape, the quality of East Coast light, and the fleeting and ever-changing nature of life between the tidelines.
Working with clay allows Sue a secondary voice, a line of communication through form. Her work explores the fragility and hidden strength found within the natural world.
The slow repetitive hand-building techniques she uses to create her pieces offer a considered way to develop the work as each piece calmly grows. Deliberate junctions are made by breaking and re-joining the form where collars or shoulders then evolve. Surface markings are infused into the work during the making, with slips and oxides being applied throughout the drying stage. Built with a white stoneware clay body, the work may be glazed or left bare.
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.