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.
Jane’s work is about finding beauty in the ordinary. It’s about the small things and recognising the accidental poetry in the unnoticed and overlooked. Living in the city, this is often found in apparently insignificant details of the built environment - the way a surface has weathered, the juxtaposition of materials, the sculptural qualities of found forms.
As a child, Jon loved drawing and messing about with mud. He and his brother and friends spent many joyful years roaming and exploring on the waste ground of empty housing plots. The exposed seams of soft yellow clay they discovered was perfect for making ‘weapons’ - squashed balls of clay on the ends of sticks. Although childhood has long passed, the activity has informed and inspired his approach to ceramic practice and his educational/community engagement work.
Stephen’s first pots were made at Soham Grammar School in the late 1960s-early 70s where his art teacher and early mentor, Peter Askem helped and encouraged his to move onto the Foundation Course in Art and Design at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.
He then progressed onto the BA Hons course in 3D Design (Ceramics) at West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham. The tutors and visiting lecturers at Farnham included Sebastian Blackie and Mo Jupp. Stephen found the ‘Farnham experience’ to be life changing.
Despite specialising in making one-off slab-built pots during her college years, Ulla established herself as a ceramic jewellery maker for many years. She has however, returned to making individual sculptural pieces. The pots that she now makes are a playful take on classic container forms, particularly the bottle. The shapes have an animated, even anthropomorphic air about them and work well in pairs or in groups.
Stephen Parry first trained at Croydon College of Art between 1974 - 1977, then moving on to Dartington Workshop until 1979 before discovering a passion for wood-fired ceramics in France.
Gaby’s current focus is making saggar-fired, wheel-thrown pots. What originally drew her to this type of making was the interplay between the highly controlled form, and smooth, polished, surface texture of the piece on the one hand; and the ‘seemingly’ random nature of the surface marks created by smoke and metallic, chemical reactions, on the other.
