Championing the very best independent ceramic makers for over 60 years

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.

 

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Meet Our Makers

All of our makers are members of the Craft Potters Association and each of them have a story to tell.

Ashraf Hanna

Award-winning artist, Ashraf Hanna works with the vessel to explore relations between profile, line, and space. Using a process of handbuilding, and working with colour and texture, Hanna examines the juxtaposition of sharp lines and soft curves.

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Jane Sheppard

Jane is a self-taught ceramicist and began coiling and smoke firing over 30 years ago. She worked for many years as a lecturer in art specialising in ceramics and finds inspiration in neolithic landscapes and artefact.  Living on the Somerset/ Wiltshire border provides rich source material.

The meditative simplicity of coiling is a fundamental part of her practice.  Jane is fascinated by the universality of clay and how it lies at the heart of the human experience.  She travelled widely in Africa researching the spiritual use of clay and visiting remote pottery communities, running workshops in the Namibia and Kalahari deserts with funding from the British Council.

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John Jelfs

John Jelfs' work has been widely exhibited in leading galleries including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Alpha House in Sherborne, Beaux Arts, Bath, Rufford Ceramics Centre in Nottingham and is also included in many collections in the UK and abroad.

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Lea Phillips

Lea Phillips makes a wide range high fired stoneware pottery, mostly functional plus some larger one-off pieces. All the ceramics are wheel-thrown, fired in an electric kiln and decorated with free abstract designs using vibrant colourful glazes made to her own recipes. A firm believer that oxidised firing is no barrier to interesting surfaces Lea enjoys glaze development and the challenge of combining form, colour, and pattern.

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Emily Stubbs

Based in North Yorkshire, Emily graduated with a BA(Hons) in Ceramics from University of Wales, Cardiff in 2007. She went on to co-found PICA Studios - an artist led studio collective of 23 artists, makers, writers, and thinkers set within an 18th century printworks in the centre of historic York.

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Chris Barnes

Chris was born in 1959. His introduction to clay began at adult education classes in Islington. He went on to study Sculpture at St. Martins School of Art, London and graduated in 1982. Chris has moved around the country over the last decades. He helped set up the Chocolate Factory studios in Hackney, London in 1995. In 2006, he moved to Argyll, Scotland to set up another pottery. By 2009, Chris relocated to Cumbria setting up a new pottery in a converted farm building.

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