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.
Ant first encountered pottery in primary school. His teacher, Mr Wright introduced him to clay and planted the beginnings of a lifelong passion. He started out as a science teacher but gave up teaching in his late twenties after years of evening classes and moved to Lincolnshire to set up his own pottery workshop.
Ian was born in Birmingham - a city famous in its past for guns, cars, motorbikes and jewellery: a city of makers. He studied ceramics at the Central School of Art, London. His teachers included Gordon Baldwin and Dan Arbeid who encouraged skills and making of all types, from hand-building to industrial techniques as possible means of artistic expression. Ian’s own teaching and exhibiting in the UK, Europe and the Far East has provided opportunities to produce work as a response to different places and cultures.
Peter has been a professional potter since 1989, evolving over the years within the context of attention to detail, balanced form and decoration, and passion – all of which he believes are crucial.
Sasha Wardell has been working in bone china since 1982. Her formal training in ceramics included both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and industrial training secondments to L’Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs, Limoges, France, and the Royal Doulton design studio, Stoke on Trent, UK.
An industrial approach to the traditional bone china manufacturing process has strongly influenced the way in which Sasha presently works, reflecting her fascination for methods and materials which present a challenge. It is for this reason that bone china, with all its idiosyncrasies, has remained her favourite material.
Annabel was born in Germany and spent several years of her childhood in Egypt before coming to England in 1956. She discovered clay at Farnham Art School on Saturday morning classes in the early 1960s. After leaving school in 1967, she attended Winchester Art School, where she was introduced to conceptual art and concrete poetry, and then Croydon College of Art. She went on to gain a BA(Hons) in Sociology and a PhD in Lesbian History at Essex University, then introduced and taught Lesbian Studies at Birkbeck College for two years. In her early 40s, she returned to her first love of clay, as one of the initial students on the City Lit Ceramics Diploma course in 1989.
Jude undertook a foundation course at Somerset College of Art & Design, then gained a Dip. AD at Gloucester College of Art & Design in Fine Art (Sculpture with Painting). At art school, Jude worked mainly in bronze. She married John Jelfs in 1972 and became a potter. Jude and John live and work at the Cotswold Pottery, located in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, UK.
