Guest Potters
Throughout the year we invite or select guest ceramic artists to exhibit their work at our shop for a limited period of 1-2 months.
If you would like to be considered as a guest artist please contact our Manager, Cat MacKenzie, at pottersbristol@gmail.com with your artist statement and a selection of images or fill out this online form...
Current Guest Potters
JUNE - JULY 2022
K
Ceramics
(Kate Clark)
K Ceramics is a small ceramics studio run by Kate Clark. Kate is a trained graphic designer, who had always wanted to translate her two-dimensional ideas into three dimensions. Clay gave her the perfect medium with which to express the tactile qualities she wanted to combine with her background.
Since 2016, with professional development and experimentation, She has evolved a style that she enjoys using and looking at. “I'm very much inspired by Japanese simplicity and appreciation of the hand made. I combine this with tactile textures and patterns derived from what I see around me. I enjoy making small batches or one of a kind pieces.”
It is recommended that you handwash these pieces due to the complex textures that may be involved on the surfaces of each piece.
May - June 2022 | STEVE CARTER
Steve Carter began his career as a production thrower, working with various other potters, before founding his own business: St. Werburgh’s Pottery.
Combined with his teaching career, and St Werburgh’s Pottery, Steve creates ceramics full-time. He specialises in slipware, designed for simplicity and brevity, qualities he admires in country pottery.
He produces a range of thrown earthenware pottery decorated with slips, often formulated from local clays.
“I seek to make vessels for everyday use. My pots import much that is common to old country pottery of the world.
‘Circumstances of creation’ count for a lot: specially sourced tools & materials, mixtures & processes.
..and a fair helping of ‘happenstance’ in the way these things are used & dealt out - seemingly like what’s going on in nature?
For me the Kiln is an agency of transformation that may - on a good day - confirm this kind of alchemy - within which my work might come to life like a firework frozen in time!”
All work is dishwasher safe.
Previous Guest Potters
April - May 2022 | PAUL TAYLOR
Paul experienced his first taste of ceramics at Berkshire College of Art and Design, where he was encouraged to pursue his interest in the subject gaining a Degree in Ceramics and Glass from Leicester Polytechnic in1983.
After several years doing a variety of jobs including working in a gallery specialising in contemporary British glass,Paul gained a PGCE in art and design education and has worked as a teacher of art and design for twenty five years, the last twenty in Cardiff, leaving the profession in 2014 to pursue a career as a full-time maker.
His work has largely centred on the vessel, using ultra thin slabs of textured terracotta, assembled and fired multiple times aiming to transform very simple materials into pottery that has its own distinctive characteristic. He wants to create vessels with interesting configurations, surfaces and textures.
“I am fascinated by the alchemy that occurs when combining clay, smoke and fire culminating in the often magical changes that occur during the firing process. My work is fired multiple times, the final firing is a low temperature saggar firing with combustible materials producing a range of surprising and often unpredictable outcomes.
I have also developed my work to incorporate slip cast forms in terracotta, these are then altered with the application of extruded and sprig moulded additions.”
October - November 2020 | TOM KNOWLES JACKSON
Tom lives in St Chloe, a small village in the Cotswolds. Potting has always been a passion of his, apart from ten year spell in the British Army, he has been making since childhood.
You may recognise Tom from the first series of The Great Pottery Throw Down, where he reached the final. Ceramics is now his full time career. As well as developing his own work, he has set up and runs The Clay Loft, a ceramics maker space near Stroud, and manufactures a range of pottery equipment and tools.
“I am a thrower, making all of my pots on a McMeekin momentum wheel. I make functional stoneware for the table, oven and sideboard with an emphasis on the ceremony of eating and drinking. My work is stoneware, high fired in gas reduction and decorated using a small range of my own glazes derived from iron, copper and wood ash.
I enjoy making simple enduring forms that have function and purpose and that can bring joy to daily routines of eating, drinking and sharing. My work is focused on creating beautiful, useable ceramics; Vessels, containers and forms that have a robust yet refined aesthetic.”
September - November 2020 | GEORGIE SCULLY
Georgie Scully Ceramics hand makes a tonal spectrum of tableware and home accessories using the slip casting method, from her south east London studio. Pick the perfect tone for your home and curate your own unique collection of tonal pieces, to be used and enjoyed daily. Georgie is heavily influenced by the greys of the inner city and translating that into something functional and contemporary.
Once slipcast cast in earthenware, each piece is bisque fired, wet sanded with an extremely fine grade paper, glazed on the inside only, and receives a final polish after its glaze firing at low stoneware temperature. This final polishing accentuates the clay’s naturally smooth surface.
These are cast using a known industrial method, however Georgie intends to keep the handmade nature of each product and enjoys creating a contrast between the look and feel of the glazed interior and unglazed polished exterior.
Georgie graduated in 2013 with a BA (Honours) in Ceramic Design.
MARCH - JULY 2020
Jim Green
Jim’s background is in Graphic Design, and still does book design. In 2012, he attended an evening course at Morley College in London, which sparked his ceramic journey. He then joined the Kiln rooms in Peckham where he had a small space and access to shared equipment.
In the summer of 2017 he took part in a ceramics residency at the WASP Studios in Glasgow, cementing his desire to do ceramics full-time. When he returned to London he set up his own studio in his garden in Brixton. In the summer of 2019 he moved to Bristol, and moved into Clayshed studio for professional ceramic artists and potters.
"I make functional pieces, paying particular attention not just to line, shape and colour but also the details of how they might be handled and used. All my work is thrown, turned and glazed by hand and I tend to make one off items or small batches, so everything is quite unique.
I’m especially inspired by studio pottery of the 60s and 70s, Scandinavian makers like Soholm and classic British household ware like Hornsea and Denby."
 Katharina Klug |  Jack Welbourne |  Gary Edwards |
|---|---|---|
 The Village Pottery |  Jayne Tricker |  Robyn Cove |
 Duck Ceramics |  Lucy Baxendale |  Emma Finch |
 Liz Vidal |  James Newbold |  Craig Eyles |
 Kath Cooper |  Frances Spice |  Bird Can Fox |
 Rebecca Sheel Edelmann |  Adrian Bates |
October - November 2019 | Katharina Klug:
My work is about simplicity of design and shape, bringing these in relationship to the surface. I am inspired by the elemental colour and shape of ancient Korean pottery. What I love about ceramic is that it starts of as a soft lump and can become pretty much anything you want it to be. After the firing it is hard and durable and can survive centuries. But at the same time it’s fragile and can be broken into pieces in a moment.I aim to create timeless vessels for contemporary interiors. Each piece is individually made from porcelain on the potter’s wheel. Naïve, spontaneous pencil strokes, graphic simple patterns that create movement and direction. Every line is drawn by hand which makes thework preserve the moment of making. The imperfections in the pattern make it lively, rough and immediate and unique but still holding an order or direction to bind them together. The Narrative to my work is coming from little snippets of observation in my environment. Linesare jumping out on me in almost anything – stripes on cloth, wires and cables, plants and grasses, architecture and streets just to name a few. After growing up in my mother’s pottery business, I trained professionally at college in Austria and Germany for 6 years. I set up business in Cambridge in 2011 and have been given the silver award 2013 and 2015 by Craft and Design magazine in the ceramiccategory.In 2014 I was chosen to join the Crafts Councils Hothouse programme. In 2016 I was accepted for selected membership of the Craft Potters Association (CPA).This year I have been shortlisted for the international Nasser Sparkasse Ceramic Price Westerwald/Germany. 2017 I exhibited for the first time at Ceramic Art London. I also got an honourable mention for two of my entries into the International Ceramic Festival competition Japan. My work was featured in the 289 issue of Ceramic Review for their Masterclass series in 2018.
August - September 2019 | Jack Welbourne:
Jack found clay at Plymouth College of Art while studying Art & Design.
He then went onto studying a Ceramics Degree at Cardiff Metropolitan University, graduating in 2014 with a 1st class degree.
For the next couple years Jack became an apprentice with various potters; studying in Sweden for 6months; and teaching taught adults with special, before setting up his own studio in Cardiff. Jack also teaches at One Wall Studios, which is where his studio is based
Jack creates reduction-fired tableware. He throws his pots from Cornish clay and collects and refines materials like wood ash, wild clays and okras to use as slips on his pots or as ingredients in glazes. His pots are fired in a 12cft gas kiln over 10-12 hours with a 4-5 hour reduction.
July - August 2019 | Gary Edwards:
New sculptural ceramic pieces by Hastings ceramicist Gary Edwards.