Contemporary Ceramics gallery and shop exhibits the greatest collectable names in British ceramics along with the most up and coming artists of today. Our distinguished makers are all carefully selected members of the Craft Potters Association.
All of our makers are members of the Craft Potters Association and each of them have a story to tell.
David was born in 1943 in Lancashire, he trained at Flintshire Technical College, Wimbledon School of Art, and Stoke on Trent College of Art, studying under Derek Emms. After meeting and marrying Margaret, a fellow potter, they established their first workshop in 1963 in Denbigh, North Wales.
David’s work descends from the Leach and British Studio Pottery tradition, where the aesthetics and ideologies of the East and West ignited a new tradition of high fired ceramics. He makes large bottles, jars and platters with a base celadon glaze decorated with his personal style of hakeme, rope impress and waxed motifs under heavy reduction overglazes and combined with ashed surfaces.
Motoko was born in 1962 in Tokyo. She graduated from Saitama University, and trained at the Takasaki College of Art. From 1993, Motoko spent six years working at the Utatsuama Craft Workshop and the Oshigahara Workshop, and then came to England in 1999.
“I aim to blur the dividing lines between art and craft. I use clay or porcelain as my canvas, creating illustrated plates for installations or vessels as sculptural displays. The themes include zoom meetings, refugees, masks, musicians, people at rest, funny faces, at the café, at the beach, at the Met, and conversations across time.” – Gail Altschuler.
Margaret was introduced to clay at Bolton College of Art and studied at Stoke-on-Trent School of Art under ex-Bernard Leach apprentice Derek Emms. It was here that she met her husband-to-be, David Frith. They established their first workshop in the mid sixties and have been based in their 18th Century woollen mill workshop in Denbigh, North Wales since 1976, where they continue after fifty years to teach and create their own work.
Richard grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, a city with a long history of ceramics. Richard graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996 with a BA(Hons) in Ceramics and Design, focussing on reduction firing and oriental ceramics. He set up his first pottery in south London, specialising in blue and white porcelain.
“Chivers is an artist potter whose work shines with a flowing lyricism in which decoration is intrinsically linked to form but is equally linked to natural random processes of image formation of the kind favoured by the American Abstract Expressionists and the European ‘matter’ painters.” Peter Davies.
