Ashley Howard is an award winning ceramic artist and dedicated teacher creating porcelain vessels informed by Far-Eastern and homespun pottery traditions. Ashley’s work draws from his interest in ritual vessels, the spaces they occupy and the ceremonies that surround them.
Primarily throwing his work on the wheel, while sometimes applying varying degrees of manipulation and altering, Ashley uses surface techniques he has developed over the years to decorate his work by drawing, brushing and printing with enamels. His unique approach to surface decoration is captured by Adrian Bland who writes ‘Howard himself has spoken of his early reticence with regard to decoration, his holding back from being a ‘potter that paints’ (Howard, 2018), and for some time his idiosyncratic mark making remained bound within the sketchbook. Such reticence was perhaps first confronted technically, with research into the right materials and processes, the right temperatures, to push the mark-making into the pot, so that the surface is not sitting on the form, but rather becomes integral to it, and the pot retains a ceramic integrity that somewhat refutes the notion of clay as canvas; ‘the glaze has pulled the marks right in’ (Howard, 2018)’
Initially studying at what is now known as the University for the Creative Arts, Rochester, Ashley has built a career combining teaching with making. Studying his Masters at the Royal College of Art in 2001, he has since published numerous articles on technical and aesthetic subjects.
“The motion, movement and rhythm of the potters wheel have always been an experiential influence on my making. This exhibition represents a stage in my continuing enquiring into the relationship between form and surface.” – Ashley Howard
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This exhibition profiles the works of eight esteemed makers, each of whom have recently been awarded Selected Member status by the Craft Potters Association.
Lise’s primary interests lie in creating decorative and sculptural forms with highly textured, expressive surfaces. The work is deeply rooted in the rugged landscape she grew up in in Norway, imbuing a sense of place, timelessness and quiet beauty within each piece, as if they were found, rather than made.
This exhibition profiles the works of ten esteemed makers, each of whom have recently been awarded Selected Member status by the Craft Potters Association.
As his working practice approaches fifty years, Jack Doherty’s work has become simpler and more focused. By stripping away what he considers unnecessary, Jack’s process now involves just one clay, one colouring mineral, and a single firing. For inspiration and courage, he looks back to prehistoric vessels, powerful anonymous objects that held both practical and spiritual significance in everyday life. These forms, made before art or craft, speak profoundly of their time and the people who lived with them.
“Simplicity is complexity resolved” - Constantin Brancusi
Lara Scobie is an Edinburgh based ceramic artist specialising in individual slip-cast vessels and bowls made in porcelain and parian clay. Focusing on the dynamic between form and pattern her work explores the cohesive integration of drawing, surface, mark making and volume. The off-center ellipses of the individual forms echo line drawings and decoration applied to the painted surfaces.
“The theme of balance is a constant, significantly underlining my current work in which ideas of dynamic interplay between form and surface develop.” – Lara Scobie
Sue’s work draws on the quiet resilience of trees and bones—forms shaped by time, marked by fragility and carrying memories of growth and decay. Through slow, receptive hand-building, each piece develops as if guided by an internal rhythm. Textured surfaces hold lines like weathered stories, while a soft matte glaze evokes a sense of calmness.
‘My hurt, my joy, my scars, my healing, all shape the work I create in clay.’ – Sue Mundy