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Exhibitors 2024
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Kirsty Adams
Kirsty Adams is an award-winning ceramicist whose work retains the spontaneity and delicacy intrinsic to making on the potter's wheel. Trained in Brighton and Japan, she now works in porcelain and stoneware clays. Kirsty's Icelandic moon jars and vessels express the ‘otherworldliness’ of the visceral, volcanic Reykjanes Peninsula. Her Rockpool and Limestone Tenmoku collections draw inspiration from the Northumberland coastline near her studio in Newcastle upon Tyne, creating unique pieces for the home.
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Sara Adams
Sara, from HSL Pottery, discovered her passion for ceramics in 2020 during lockdown. With the mentorship of Jon French, her ceramic journey has flourished. Sara offers a variety of Stoke-on-Trent-themed items and recently completed a commission for the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent.
Based in Stoke-on-Trent, Sara is inspired by the area's rich ceramic heritage. She aims to make pottery more accessible and offers mobile pottery decorating and hand-building classes to share her passion with others.
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Stephen Adams
Stephen Adams has recently built a new, larger workshop equipped for throwing, extruding, mould making, and glazing. He continues to explore mechanical forms, drawing inspiration from the industrial heritage of the Black Country and shipwreck photographs taken during scuba diving. Fascinated by the distortion and decay of rusted, coral-encrusted machinery, Stephen creates pieces in stoneware and earthenware. He is currently experimenting with Raku firing techniques to introduce elements of decay and distortion to his mechanical forms.
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Raya Amir
Following 30 years of teaching foreign languages at a primary school, Raya Amir has retired and is now focused on enhancing her skills in clay. She has joined several clay studios in the UK and Australia. While involved in various kinds of clay forming, her passion lies in designing and creating garden sculptures.
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Julie Ayton
Julie Ayton finds the tension between form and decoration compelling. Drawn to ceramic traditions where decoration is central, she balances this with a focus on form and volume. Recently, themes of birds and flowers have emerged in her work, reflecting concerns about nature's decline. Using raw glazes, she draws directly into porcelain or stoneware clay, followed by a single firing when possible.
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Emma Bailey
Emma Bailey Ceramics is steeped in local heritage, using the traditional on-glaze method to produce colourful and uplifting designs inspired by Clarice Cliff.
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Barbara Barlow
Barbara Barlow has been creating art since 2006, focusing on watercolours, cut paper art (Notan), and reduction linocut printmaking. Her linocuts are displayed internationally, with notable achievements including second prize in the Keele Three Counties Open Art Exhibition. Two years ago, she began exploring ceramics, with a primary interest in hand-building. She recently began a course in Stoke-on-Trent to learn wheel throwing and bought a kiln in 2023.
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John Barlow
John Barlow has a lifelong passion for drawing, illustrating, painting, and repurposing materials for sculptural pieces. Recently, he turned his attention to ceramics, creating frost-resistant ceramic faces designed for gardens and outbuildings. These pieces are intended to add character and uniqueness to outdoor spaces.
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Pippa Barrow
Pippa Barrow creates hand-built stoneware sculptures and sculptural vessels with refined, tactile, unglazed surfaces. Her work features clean lines and simple organic forms in a muted, natural palette. She enjoys experimenting with pigmented, grogged clay and draws inspiration from the natural world.
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Sandie Bebbington
All my work is handmade. Each piece has several processes and takes a number of weeks to complete. My inspiration comes through an historical narrative that interests me, or the landscape that surrounds my workshop. I prefer to make either an individual work or a small number of pieces exploring the subject and techniques. This results in a unique ceramic or artwork.
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Charlotte Berry
Charlotte Berry is a Sheffield-based potter who creates thrown, slabbed, and moulded functional stoneware pieces. Each piece is individually decorated with naturalistic depictions of British birds using slip, sgraffito, and paper resist techniques.
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Judith Bishop
Judith Bishop has a lifelong interest in ceramics and works from her home studio in Stone. She enjoys all aspects of clay, including hand-building, throwing, and slip casting. Judith creates a variety of items, from figurative pieces to functional and decorative items for the home and garden, and continuously experiments with new glazes.
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Hayley Blackwell
Hayley Blackwell graduated from Derby University with a BA Hons. in Fine Art in 2016. She rekindled her passion for hand-building with clay during a ceramic artist residency at Artcore in 2023. Her work explores the rich history of ceramic art in the Midlands, developing her style while being influenced by the past.
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Sarah Brabbin
Sarah Brabbin hand-builds stoneware clay sculptures inspired by her encounters with British wildlife. Her tactile forms encourage engagement and connection with the natural world, aiming to reconnect humans with wildlife for mutual benefit.
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Nicola Briggs
Nicola Briggs creates stunning porcelain ceramics inspired by natural textures and shifting landscapes. Her 'Silhouette' collection features dynamic surfaces with layered colours, relief details, and glaze textures. Nicola graduated from Staffordshire University with a BA(Hons) in Design: Ceramics Arts and now works from her garden studio in Tyldesley, Manchester.
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Rebecca Brown
Rebecca Brown works in porcelain and stoneware, combining drawing, painting, and printmaking to build narratives on the surface of her decorative hand-built ceramics. She intentionally leaves fingerprints, brush strokes, and marks exposed to highlight the relationship between vessel and subject. Drawing inspiration from her surroundings and half-remembered Scottish superstitions and old wives' tales, Rebecca aims to capture moments of human connection and intimacy in her work.
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Sara Budzik
Sara Budzik began developing her self-taught ceramic practice in 2016/17 after discovering a love for clay while teaching art. She focuses on hand-built ceramic sculpture, exploring the textural qualities of clay and decorating with slips, underglazes, oxides, and glazes to create unique pieces.
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Deborah Byrne
Deborah Byrne, born and raised in Yorkshire, now lives in Rugeley and works full-time as a ceramicist from her courtyard studio. Influenced by surface pattern, texture, and colour, she creates functional ware for the home using a mix of commercial and self-made glazes, often finishing with lustres.
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Ali Chan
Ali Chan specialises in exploring traditional forms and skills, creating vessels for life and living. She employs stoneware clay and texturing skills to add a tactile sense to her works.
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Jennifer Cobb
Jennifer Cobb rediscovered her love for clay in her mid-30s, having grown up potting with her grandmother. She works predominantly in stoneware and porcelain, creating wheel-thrown pieces that are altered by hand, inspired by the natural world.
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Qi Fang Colbert
Based in Northumberland, Qi Fang Colbert is an internationally awarded artist, ceramicist, illustrator, and researcher. Her work combines original drawings with ceramics, celebrating carving techniques inspired by Taoism and Phenomenology philosophy. Qi's hand-built and thrown high-fire stoneware features free-hand carved and inlaid designs.
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Timothy Copsey
Timothy Copsey's work is inspired by the Pennine landscape and seasons, inhabiting the border between function and sculpture. His pieces, including vases, bowls, bottles, and cups, are multiply fired and incorporate wood firing and lustre techniques, resonating with the organic and elemental nature of their origins.
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Tom Cowen
Tom Cowen has been throwing for a couple of years after taking evening classes at Clay College. He experiments with glaze, surface texture, and combining thrown and hand-built forms, inspired by the contrasting textures of clay through various processes.
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Mark Dally
Mark Dally's Black & White tableware is a contemporary take on traditional Staffordshire slipware, influenced by 1950s surface patterns and pre-Hispanic Mexican and Australian Aboriginal art. His sculptures are inspired by 1950s and '60s Sci-Fi, playful cartoon animation, and artists like Joan Miró and M.C. Escher.
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Amy Davis
Amy Davis, also known as alou, is a textile artist and embroiderer from Stoke-on-Trent. She challenges traditional craft boundaries by blending ceramics with experimental embroidery techniques. Her work celebrates the beauty of imperfection, reshaping traditional craft aesthetics.
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David Dowler
David Dowler, a ceramic technician at Staffordshire University, enjoys creating wheel-thrown functional pottery in his spare time. He is drawn to reduction stoneware and oriental glazes and is currently exploring Ash and Shino glazes.
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Mel Fowell
Mel Fowell, a local artist in Newcastle, creates ceramics inspired by the natural environment. His work involves several firing processes, including saggar firing and Raku, to create tactile surfaces and bold contrasts, often suggestive of richly lichened rocks and strata.
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Deborah Frith
Deborah Frith holds a HND in Ceramic Design from North Staffordshire Polytechnic. She focuses on creating animal and nature-inspired work using hand-building techniques and slip casting. Her high-fired stoneware pieces explore textures and 'opening up' the form.
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Laura Margaret Green
Laura Margaret Green is a sculptor in her final year of a Masters in Ceramics at Stoke-on-Trent. She draws inspiration from the human form and pattern, creating bright and striking figurative sculptures with subtle facial expressions. Her work involves multiple layers of underglaze and firings.
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Denise Griggs
Denise Griggs has been potting for four years and also enjoys abstract painting. Her ceramics are inspired by the sea and rock pools, using a variety of clay bodies and firing techniques like Pit firing and Raku. She creates functional art pieces by throwing or hand-building and embellishing vessels.
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Philip Hardaker
Philip Hardaker has been producing ceramic artwork for around 50 years in Stoke. He specialises in ceramic mosaic making using ancient shards from the area and also hand models ceramic artefacts.
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Dave Harper
Dave Harper's work is at the beginning of a new conceptual development. His pieces investigate and challenge the traditional role of the dish platter within the domestic setting, aiming to be visually interesting while aesthetically enhancing the presentation of food.
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David Craig Howson
David Craig Howson is a potter based in Leek, Staffordshire Moorlands. His pottery forms are inspired by the wilderness and landscape of the Staffordshire Moorlands, as well as Scandinavian and Viking cultural artefacts. He works with dark grogged clay bodies and uses textural slips and glazes.
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Annette Hewetson
Annette Hewetson has lived in Stoke-on-Trent her entire life, naturally gravitating towards working with clay. She focuses on hand-building, enjoying the slower process and the ability to modify designs as they progress. Her ideas often come from nature and past travels.
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Rebecca Hogg
Rebecca Hogg is a surface pattern designer working in Stoke-on-Trent. She currently works for Royal Stafford and has previously worked for Flux Stoke-on-Trent, Dunoon, and Steelite. Rebecca has met many influential potters, artists, and industry leaders, learning something unique from each.
Her practice focuses on surface decoration, combining hand-drawn imagery with digital elements. She records the visual world through sketches applied directly onto clay or the ceramic canvas, exploring the integrity of images across the medium of ceramics.
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Huxley Hunt
Huxley Hunt's experimental and eclectic ceramics are based on his love of fossils. He uses locally sourced cretaceous dinosaur clay and adorns his functional ceramic art with casts of his best fossil finds. Huxley learned casting under Phil Hardaker and participated in his first art exhibition last year.
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Paul James
Paul James, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, spent 30 years in fashion design with roles at Calvin Klein, Cole Haan, and COACH. Returning to ceramics after years in New York, he rekindled his passion for clay. Paul's work is minimalist, focusing on the natural textures of clay, often in black, white, and grey, with an accent of blue. His signature style includes a broken line and a sensitive edge, aiming to create nearly perfect pieces with an unexpected twist.
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Caroline Kisielewicz
Caroline Kisielewicz embarked on her pottery journey in Summer 2022 alongside her veterinary work. She finds pottery a fantastic outlet for her creativity, enjoying the mindful process of wheel-throwing techniques, developing various shapes, and testing different glazes and firing techniques.
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Crystal Lane
Crystal Lane is a community college and workshop-trained American artist from the Santa Cruz, California area. She primarily creates decorative stoneware gnome homes and porcelain fairy homes. After visiting the UK for the bi-annual event last year, she was deeply inspired by the rich ceramic history and the Wedgwood collection. Crystal values the education from her clay community in California and is eager to connect and develop relationships with the UK ceramics community.
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Peter Larkin
Peter Larkin's first encounter with clay was at Wedgwood’s Barlaston, where he worked on the shop floor and assisted throwers. After working in smaller studio workshops and teaching at Newcastle College and Staffordshire Polytechnic, he now creates functional stoneware in his small workshop.
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Tony Laverick
Tony Laverick established his studio in 1988 after studying ceramics and working as a designer for Coalport China in Stoke-on-Trent. With a strong industry background, Tony has a deep appreciation for ceramics, particularly Royal Doulton's late 19th-century art-ware and the work of Clement Massier. Influenced by artists like Kandinsky and Mondrian, he has developed unique glazes and techniques through years of experimentation. Tony believes that taking risks in his work distinguishes the artist from the craftsperson.
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Costas Loizides
Costas Loizides has been working with clay for over 25 years, creating unique ceramic designs. He focuses on human nature and feelings, using hand-building techniques to design realistic and imaginative forms. His work often combines different elements and techniques to create distinct art pieces.
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Lilian Mann
Lilian Mann briefly attended Grays School of Art, Aberdeen, before pursuing a different career. Since retiring from the NHS, she has become more involved in ceramics, attending part-time courses and creating wheel-thrown ceramics and sculptures in stoneware and porcelain.
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Andrew Matheson
Andrew Matheson is a studio potter based in Lichfield since 1981, specialising in reduction-fired porcelain and stoneware pieces. He is a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and is known for his blue and white porcelain pieces.
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Shauna McCann
Shauna McCann explores clay and other materials such as glass, wood, stone, and metal. She works with porcelain paper clay and experiments with various ceramic processes and alternative firing techniques. Her work is deeply connected to the earth and the transformative elements of air, water, and fire.
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Gillian McMillan
Gillian McMillan is an experienced ceramic designer, working both in industry and as a sole potter. Her inspiration comes from nature, creating porcelain pieces on a potter's wheel or through press moulding, then drawing, cutting, painting, glazing, and lustering.
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Claire Millen
Claire Millen is passionate about creating ceramics that are bright, cheerful, and colourful. Her style is abstract and bold, utilising Sgraffito techniques to carve through clay like chocolate, creating intricate marks and patterns. Claire is known for her Bollington Bears, inspired by the White Nancy landmark in Bollington, where she had her first studio. She also enjoys teaching classes, allowing complete beginners to experience the joy of working with clay while making their own Bollington Bears.
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Stephen Murfitt
Stephen Murfitt is driven by an obsession with clay's versatility. He creates hand-built and Raku-fired ceramic forms and vessels, influenced by the effects of weathering, erosion, corrosion, and decay. His making, glazing, and firing methods result in completely unique pieces.
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Fiona Newby
Fiona Newby draws inspiration from the curves of pregnancy, creating her Mother Earth pieces to honour mothers. She burnishes the clay surfaces to a smooth finish before smoke firing, resulting in unique marks that symbolise life's experiences.
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Tina Perry
Tina Perry is a ceramic wildlife sculptor based in Staffordshire. A finalist in the David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year, she spends one day a week at the Sculpture Lounge with other artists and has exhibited in Leek Open Studios.
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Huw Phillips
Huw Phillips is a ceramic artist specialising in wheel-thrown ware. He produces sculptural designs finished in vitreous slips and saggar-fired vessels. Huw also creates bespoke thrown ware for various ceramic design companies and teaches workshops in throwing, Raku, and hand-building techniques.
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Linda Pitcher
Linda Pitcher is a mature student studying Contemporary Design Crafts specialising in ceramics. Her work reflects on Brancusi's quote, "Simplicity is complexity resolved," using vessel forms and muted colours or etched textures to convey narratives of tranquillity, peace, and respect.
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Tracy Kaye Poole
Tracy Kaye Poole's work reflects her interest in design, nature, and experimentation. With over six years of experience and a background in Applied Arts, she creates hand-built, sculptural, and wheel-thrown pieces, experimenting with alternative firing techniques and organic materials.
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Debbie Randall
Debbie Randall was classically trained at Camberwell College of Arts and creates wheel-thrown porcelain and white stoneware pieces. Inspired by classic forms, her work explores harmony between shape and surface with her own glazes, mainly focusing on bespoke orders and stand-alone pieces.
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Repeat Repeat
Repeat Repeat designs and creates bone china pottery, from mugs and tableware to the Enfant Collection of nurseryware. Their contemporary designs are crafted using traditional techniques, preserving the skills of the English Potteries.
Founded in 1984 as a small design studio, Repeat Repeat initially handled various commissions in graphics, illustrations, and textile designs. Inspired by Stoke-on-Trent's 400-year pottery heritage, they soon began focusing on bone china.
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Adam Rush
Adam Rush's work is based on personal experiences, often accompanied by humour. His creative process results in expressive artworks that touch on themes of anxiety, depression, and temporality, allowing viewers to develop an instant connection.
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Paulina Sasanka
Paulina began her pottery journey 18 months ago and instantly fell in love with the craft. While still developing her style, she enjoys experimenting with clay. Her work is often colourful, cheerful, childlike, and inspired by nature, reflecting her primary artistic focus.
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Celina Sawicka
Celina Sawicka has a passion for learning new crafts and miniaturising them. Her miniatures are wheel-thrown with 10-15g of clay, exploring different glazes and firing techniques. Her work invites viewers to appreciate the beauty in small details.
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Freddie Scragg
Freddie Scragg graduated from Staffordshire University in 2015 with a Fine Art Honours Degree. Freddie enjoys working with various mediums, including chicken wire, charcoal, and pastel, but has recently focused more on mount board and clay. Inspired by nature, especially zoology, Freddie is fascinated by how installation art can directly interact with the observer.
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Ken and Val Shelton
Ken and Valerie Shelton make pottery together in their home near Stoke-on-Trent. Ken throws the pots in white earthenware, which Valerie then paints freehand with underglaze colours. Each piece is unique, and they have been Elected Members of the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain for over 20 years.
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Pauline Shelton
Pauline Shelton discovered the joys of working with clay in retirement after a career in book publishing and 25 years as a Church of England priest. She focuses on hand-building and is fascinated by the human face, creating work that reveals the beauty in imperfection and brokenness. Influenced by Karen Bird and Shozo Michikawa, she applies wheel-based techniques to her sculpted heads and bowls.
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Nathan James Smallman
Nathan James Smallman is a Modeller and Designer based in Longton, working from The Roslyn Works. He holds a BA (Hons) in Ceramic Design and has extensive experience in the field. Nathan incorporates painting into his pottery, creating unique 'Potteries Skyline' pieces.
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Emily Hope
Emily Hope (known as Wonky Wabbit) is a potter who turned to ceramics after a stroke left her with a permanent brain injury. Pottery became a crucial part of her recovery, helping her rediscover her worth and creativity. Her pieces may be a little wonky, reflecting the unique journey of their maker. Her work was featured on Season 2 of BBC1's 'Make it at Market'.
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Christian Cowper & Claudia Surrage
Christian Cowper and Claudia Surrage run an award-winning design studio in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Their 'Bowl Gang' series features playful, hand-built ceramics that explore mental health benefits through imaginative forms and subtle irregularities.
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Rosie Threadgold
Rosie Threadgold celebrates the Potteries' industrial heritage through her 'Sisu' series. Her ceramics reflect the history and creativity of Stoke-on-Trent's potbanks, aiming to connect viewers with the community's craftsmanship and heritage.
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Sarah Villeneau
Sarah Villeneau creates abstract sculptural ceramics that defy definition, evoking ideas of the body, landscape, and organic forms. Her highly tactile and often interactive pieces invite a visceral response, rewarding careful viewing.
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Philippa Whiteside
Philippa Whiteside is a Lancashire-based ceramic maker inspired by nature and emotional wellbeing. She pushes porcelain's capabilities, mixing pigments into the porcelain body and exploring thought and emotion through her pieces. Her recent work focuses on the colours of sunsets and the landscapes of the Lake District.