Jo Walker

Having enjoyed making from a young age, Jo completed a degree in jewellery and silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art before embarking on a career in retail management. It wasn’t until her children started school that she enrolled in a pottery course, where what had begun as a hobby quickly became an obsession.

Jo works from her home studio in Fife, producing wheel-thrown and hand-built ceramics decorated using the sgraffito technique. Her inspiration comes from two distinct strands: nature – particularly wild plants – and mid-century architecture and pattern. The botanical pieces celebrate weeds that are often overlooked or disdained, allowing their architectural beauty to shine, while the geometric designs explore a detailed interplay of pattern and form, resulting in complex, graphic surfaces.

Working in a white stoneware clay body, Jo throws or hand-builds each piece, creating a surface that serves as the perfect canvas for decoration. Once formed and partially dried, the pieces are coated with a layer of the same clay tinted with stain. She then uses the sgraffito technique, scratching through the coloured layer to reveal the white clay beneath. The slipped surfaces are left unglazed to emphasise the incised decoration and create a tactile finish, contrasting with the glossy glazed interiors.