Kay Aplin

Kay Aplin graduated in 1995 from Chelsea College of Art, specialising in ceramics and glass. Since then, Kay has had a successful career as an architectural ceramist, producing a distinct range of site-specific commissions for the public realm around the UK and internationally.

In 2011, Kay founded The Ceramic House, an award-winning artist-led project space, residency, gallery and living showcase of her ceramic installations.

Since 2013, Kay has been developing wall-based ceramic installations for exhibition and by commission. Inspired by botanical themes, each body of work responds to place.

Themes recur through observing detail and pattern within nature and architecture. Kay is inspired by the spectacular and strives to achieve a sense of exuberance through colour, texture and scale. She endows tactile properties with equal importance to the visual, hence her penchant for relief.

Kay’s process for her botanical-inspired work involves using a digital microscope to uncover hidden details in flora, magnified to reveal highly textured designs that become the basis for tile-based compositions. She slip casts porcelain using moulds created from modelling clay prototypes and uses an electric kiln (cone 8), for which she mixes her own glaze recipes, and wood fires (cone 10), using soda and/or glaze.