In Conversation with Contemporary Ceramics
Contemporary Ceramics is excited to present Paul Jackson & Richard Phethean – New Work. As part of this joint exhibition, which runs from Thursday 26th June to Saturday 19th July 2025, we spoke with each of the artists. In this post, we talk to Richard Phethean, and delve into his creative process and learn more about how he works.
Contemporary Ceramics: How has your work grown or changed for this exhibition? What kind of journey do you hope to take your audience on?
Richard Phethean: This latest body or work includes large scale slab pieces, made with a large slab-roller – a recent addition to our studio and offering the possibility of creating 2D canvasses alongside my repertoire of thrown, altered and assembled regulars.
Contemporary Ceramics: Within your slip decoration, there are recurring motifs, what look like leaf-shapes, and linear patterns. Is there a story behind these? Do you have designs that have always been with you?
Richard Phethean: On a school trip to Barcelona, in 2009 a brush with Picasso, in the museum dedicated to his life and work, was a pivotal moment. Using the pot as a canvas for making cubist-inspired references to vessel forms, with the aid of paper resist became an ongoing exploration. A leaf motif evolved – horizontally as a suggestion of a pot rim and vertically as simply a repeat positive/negative signature image. Recently it has reappeared along with a warmer palette and the fields or block colour have become fields of coloured lines – straight and wavy.
Contemporary Ceramics: There is a clear relationship between form and surface decoration, and between glazed areas and the unglazed clay. What is the relationship between form and surface decoration?
Richard Phethean: Opting to work in terracotta and slips was an initial decision, taken due to the lack of a gas kiln in my first studio space, with access only to a communal electric kiln, but ultimately, became established as my preferred medium, combining form and surface as a harmonious endeavour.
Contemporary Ceramics: How has your practice changed over time? What has been a seminal and/or inspirational moment?
Richard Phethean: Realising very early on that being a production potter wasn’t going to fulfil me as a maker. Seeking teaching opportunities became a financial route to creative freedom and taking one-to-one students for throwing tuition helped me identify the key stumbling blocks and develop a parallel career.
A twelve-year stint as a visiting tutor at Harrow overlapped with a thirteen-year pottery residency in an Oxfordshire Quaker School, where, outside my school timetable, I could now run my own courses during evenings and school holidays, providing me with a secure base in which to develop more sculptural avenues, using throwing, altering and assembling techniques. The scale increased and my surface work became looser and more gestural.
Contemporary Ceramics: Has clay always been your artform? How did you first get involved in working with clay?
Richard Phethean: As a child, reading, writing and numbers were always a challenge – undiagnosed dyslexia, but my artist mum recognised my strengths in drawing and painting, but particularly in making things. Construction kits, Meccano etc were my constant pleasure but aged about 13 we visited Scot Marshall’s pottery in west Cornwall and I had a powerful sense that this was something I could do for a job.
At 18, spending a week on the potter’s wheel with Colin Pearson in my second week at Camberwell School of Art/Crafts, firmly established this as my destiny. My degree show was a range of reduction-fired stoneware tableware. Apprenticeships with Colin and Janice Tchalenko followed, continuing in the same medium.
Contemporary Ceramics: How does working with clay influence your life beyond the workshop?
Richard Phethean: Last year was our tenth since establishing a pottery school in west Cornwall and my 50th as a pottery teacher. The endless round of helping students develop their own, often quirky ideas invariably stimulates another avenue for exploration which benefits us both.
