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.
Daniel graduated from the Harrow Studio Ceramics course in 1991, then had a shared workspace space at Kate Malone’s Balls Pond studios in London before returning to work as a technician and studio manager on the Harrow ceramics course. In 1997, he moved to West Wales to set up a studio on a smallholding where he has continued to develop his work and firings for the past 23 years. Daniel exhibits widely across the UK, Europe and internationally.
Claudia trained as a painter but transferred to pots because she found the turning surface sympathetic to an unfolding visual narrative. Stories are her raw material - both her own and other people's, also fictional stories, songs, and poetry. The human, cultural, and historic associations of pottery connect particularly well to the work she does interpreting women’s histories and contemporary lives. The nature of pots is that they can break, and so can be mended. This she finds to be a compelling metaphor for both trauma and survival - the mending has an optimistic quality.
Yo Thom is a Japanese potter based in North Dorset. Her journey as a potter began when working for Lisa Hammond MBE in 1998 whilst studying ceramics in Kent. She trained as a functional thrower at Maze Hill Pottery, Greenwich, then set up her own studio in 2004. Yo relocated her pottery to North Dorset in 2009.
Jitka was born in Prague. She studied medicine and worked as an anatomist. In 1985, she moved to Britain and studied ceramics at Croydon College of Art and Design and Stone Masonry at City of Bath College. She set up her studio in London with the help of a Crafts Council grant. She lives and works in Bristol.
Ben Arnup’s interest in ceramics started at home. With a sculptor and a potter as parents, he grew up learning ceramics skills and technology. Ben has exhibited in Britain, Europe and America, his work is represented in public collections in Britain and Germany.
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.