James Hake

After studying Three-Dimensional Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, James completed The Pottery Skills Course near Kilkenny, Ireland, where an intensive focus on technique, combined with the time and space to develop his practice, helped shape his distinctive approach to ceramics.

He subsequently returned to the UK and established his studio in a converted barn in rural north Lancashire, where he has worked for over a decade.

James develops his work through repetition and variation, throwing pots in groups and refining forms across a series of related pieces. This iterative approach extends to glazing and firing, where he works by observing and responding to the subtle differences that emerge through making. His practice is guided by observation and discovery rather than a fixed outcome, allowing each stage of the process to inform the next.

As David Whiting has written, Hake is “interested in essential shapes, historically tested, but ones to which he gives a new energy in both thrown and slab-built work, enriched by dark tenmokus, shinos, copper reds and various ashes.”