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.
Fiona’s focus is mainly on hand built ceramic vessels, with multiple layered surfaces. They combine traditional and contemporary processes. Pieces are first usually coiled or slab built, then painted and printed with coloured slips.
Kim's work is inspired by the history, geology and people of South Wales, where she has lived and worked throughout her career. Some of her ceramics work is a direct response to historical events, whilst other pieces explore wider, more general themes and narratives. The geological structure of the South Wales Coalfield is a current theme, acting as a metaphor for the way that communities bury and distort the past, creating memories that fit their contemporary needs.
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.
Yusun is drawn by the vessel form. She found a way to explore vessel forms while observing a bottle from the Korean Joseon Dynasty which was constructed by joining two different forms. Looking at the attached part of the bottle, she imagined opening the enclosed part and seeing what was hidden inside.
All Francis' work is thrown using stoneware clays and is reduction fired, increasingly turning to salt glaze for his desired surface. Functional pots are his main concern, pots made for use in daily life, often giving a nod towards other historical objects, not necessarily made of clay, featuring utilitarian components now ultimately defunct but repurposed as decoration. He uses a muted palette of glazes and seeks a balance between looseness and definition in his forms.
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.
