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.
Shirley has been making things for as long as she can remember. With a background in textiles and a degree in Surface Decoration from Leicester Polytechnic, her early fascination with ceramics began while visiting the ceramics department, which felt to her like an alchemist’s world. Years later, during a period of personal change, she joined an evening hand-building course and was immediately drawn to clay. What began as a source of calm and focus has since developed into an intuitive, largely self-taught practice.
Tessa trained in Ceramics at Goldsmiths College, London 1981-84. On leaving college she developed a method of sawdust firing for surfaces that were high fired and internally glazed making it possible for them to hold water. Her vessel ranges are both hand-built and slip-cast, sculptural in form but always functional.
John comes from a family of engineers going back several generations, so it was natural for him to follow suit. However, he made an unenthusiastic engineer, and after several years teaching he went back to college and gained a place on the 3D course at Manchester College of Art where he was introduced to clay for the first time.
Chris trained in stage design at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, and after settling in the UK, built a successful career in the theatre, designing, writing and directing. In 1983, he moved to Devon and it was here that he fell in love with clay. His first studio was one that he and his partner built in their back-garden and he began to produce thrown tableware on a homemade Leach wheel.
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.
