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 rebellious schoolgirl, Tina always knew that she would go to art college as she absented herself from her maths lessons to go to exhibitions. In 1974, she commenced her BA in Ceramics at Bristol Polytechnic with a strong 2D portfolio but hardly any experience of working with clay and she found it challenging. Nevertheless, she was drawn to it because it was the only material which was so malleable, human, primal, intimate, flexible, fundamental, and could be adapted to suit all personalities.
Claudia trained as a painter but transferred to pots because she found the turning surface sympathetic to an unfolding visual narrative. Stories are her raw material - both her own and other people's, also fictional stories, songs, and poetry. The human, cultural, and historic associations of pottery connect particularly well to the work she does interpreting women’s histories and contemporary lives. The nature of pots is that they can break, and so can be mended. This she finds to be a compelling metaphor for both trauma and survival - the mending has an optimistic quality.
Martin Pearce creates abstract sculptural pieces inspired by natural forms. His work often portrays a state of flux, with the quality of moving water or cloud forms, while other pieces appear as if they could be in quiet contemplation.
Jo specialises in wheel-thrown porcelain and works from her studio in Hackney, East London. Her practice includes hand-making a fine porcelain design range, lighting and unique objects. Her individual approach to wheel-thrown ceramics, where high-fired porcelain often appears paradoxically to be fresh off the wheel, balances softness with rigidity, smoothness with weight and tactility.
Sophie MacCarthy has always been drawn to random scatterings of leaves on the ground. Scatter and flow, rhythm and movement are consistent themes in the decoration of her earthenware pieces, along with a bold and joyous approach to colour.
