Abigail Simpson

The daughter of the painter Michael Simpson, Abigail’s original intention was to become an actor: she studied at the Drama Centre in London, but after graduating she became more focused on ceramics.

Her hand coiled sculptural vessels produced in her Hoxton studio quickly gained an international reputation and led to her work being exhibited in London, NewYork, Miami and Los Angeles. Simpson’s work has been catalogued in two post-war British Art Auctions at Christies. “For several years, the theme of the vessel has been constant in all my work. During that time I have attempted to develop every aspect of it’s physical possibilities.

In terms of ‘engineering the form’ these objects have moved through architectural stages, sometimes resembling entirely non-functional columns as well as retaining their status as vessels. This has led inevitably to more sculptural concerns, and a desire to leave any semblance of ‘traditional studio based pottery’ behind.

Beyond the surface and scale, I am interested in the raw visceral properties of the material. I am also increasingly interested in juxtaposition: groups of objects, their relationship, either coherent or incoherent, and how the ancient history of ceramics can touch the possibility of pure sculpture”

Akiko Hirai

Akiko graduated in ceramics at the University of Westminster and subsequently Central St. Martins. She works from her London based studio as well as lecturing in ceramics. She is becoming one of the foremost potters in the UK and has a huge following. Akiko is continuously creating new forms, glazes and textures she makes pieces that vary in scale between the smallest tea bowl and exquisite moon jars. Silvia

Albert Montserrat

I specialise in throwing large multi-part pots exclusively in porcelain and on the application of a family of glazes called "Oil Spot Glazes". With a big influence of the classic Egyptian vessels, my main interest is in the large ceramic work and the research of glazes. The impact, the statement, the challenge and the satisfaction that making these vessels give is extraordinary. I use a combination of glazes to achieve different colours and textures but all of them work under the same principle.

Ali Tomlin

All of her work is in porcelain and individually wheel thrown. Most pieces are glazed only on the inside and sanded on other surfaces to achieve a soft, tactile finish. She likes to leave some of the porcelain white, giving her a clean canvas to play with marks, lines and texture. Even though they appear fragile, everything can be used.

Anna Silverton

Anna Silverton’s vases and bowls are all one-off and wheel-thrown in porcelain. The process of wheel-throwing is inherently repetitive; it allows her to focus on gradual renewal and reinvention. She searches for shapes she finds beautiful, making incremental modifications and teasing out new combinations of intriguing form. Her pots have changed very gradually over time; similar themes reoccur alongside new discoveries as she searches for the perfect shape and surface.

Annie Turner

Annie Turner holds an almost unique place in British Ceramics, unique because her art is so closely linked to just one region, the river Deben in Suffolk, on England’s east coast. Her work is inextricably linked to this water land, the flows and currents of a broad estuary and its banks and boarders, a place she has long sailed and navigated, just as her late father took his own boat on it before her. Annie Turner’s sculptures are as much about rootedness, and her own family’s strong connections with the river for generations, as it is about the tidal changes and seasonal rhythms that mark the progress of time.

Ashraf Hanna

Hand-building the forms, Ashraf makes both individual and related groups of vessels, each object informing the next. The profiles, lines and spaces emerging from this process of development, their ultimate placement in relation to one another, the juxtaposition of sharp lines and softer curves, have become a major interest.

The forms are further enhanced by the introduction of a carefully considered, restrained palette of refined slips and stained clays. The pared-down nature of these new forms and the subtle surface treatments combine to produce vessels that are concerned with essence of form.

Barbara Hast

The fine porcelain art of Barbara Hast causes time to stand still and invites the spectator to marvel at the metamorphoses that gradually reveal themselves. The natural growth process of plants and fruit has inspired these quirky creations of ‘white gold’. Plainly and modestly, they refer to the 17th century’s love of nature and remind us of the exotic curiosities of baroque treasure chambers. Hast’s objects contain a whole variety of illusions. Their invisible roots and tentacles reach out into all directions of time and history. Hast’s art pays homage to the delicacy of nature’s creations

Daniel Reynolds

Reynolds has exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. His work forms part of the Patricia Phelps Cisneros Collection, New York. He has undertaken site-specific commission work for boutique hotels and private residences around the world including London, Tokyo, the Caribbean, Melbourne, Verbier, the Maldives, Caracas and New York.

Daniel Smith

Since graduating from the celebrated Harrow Ceramics course in 1994 Daniel Smith has worked from the East London studio he helped establish. This continuity is reflected in his work with a commitment to exploring the same family of useful forms - plates, bowls, cups, jugs, vases. All pieces are hand-thrown in porcelain with a pared down aesthetic just occasionally emphasised with simple decoration. With quiet dedication Daniel has built up a loyal international following over the years, his work appealing to both collectors and those who like beautiful, eminently functional objects for everyday use.

David Roberts

David Roberts is one of the most significant ceramic artists working in Europe today. A distinguished English potter, he has an international reputation as a leading practitioner in Raku ceramics: a technique with its origin in small-scale vessels made for the Tea Ceremony in late sixteenth-century Japan. Roberts is acknowledged as responsible for the introduction and promotion of modern, large scale Raku in Europe. He has also been instrumental in its re-introduction to the United States of America, where his example has played a key role in the foundation of the ‘Naked Raku’ movement. In his personal exploration of this traditional technique, Roberts has transformed it into a vibrant and contemporary art form.

His work is represented exclusively at Hexagon Classic Design.

Dominic Welch

I have followed a traditional but unexpected route into making sculpture.

After completing A levels I had become interested in undertaking an apprenticeship and during a period of reflection before embarking on a geography degree I placed a rather speculative advert looking for an arts-based apprenticeship.

This lead quickly to a meeting with the sculptor Peter Randall-Page with whom I subsequently worked as an assistant for ten years. This involved working in all aspects involved in the production of stone sculpture, including enlargement by triangulation from maquettes, major exhibitions, international symposia, and numerous public and private commissions.

During this time, which was not only a wonderful introduction to sculpture, but also a new way of life, I began to make my own work, and this process has gradually built momentum ever since.

The majority of my work is speculative for exhibition, although this is always complimented by both private and public commissioned work.

Fausto Salvi

In the past few years Fausto has worked in schools and private studios in many countries. These experiences have given him a great deal, not least of which is the direct confrontation with students, artists and teachers. He is convinced that the practice of involving oneself in new, unknown and sometimes uncomfortable situa- tions is a great help in developing a sensitivity closely aligned with the contemporary rhythm. He believes that the artist should put himself outside his comfort zone and spend some time in situations differing from his normal realm of life.

Isobel Egan

While I have always been inspired by architecture and its multi-dimensional portrayal of form, the inspiration for my work is in fact multifaceted and includes architecture, space, memory and emotion. I work exclusively with porcelain as the intrinsic characteristics of the material, its translucence and delicate paper-like quality enable me to fully realise my concepts.

My work represents a relationship with space and how it shapes us, both physically and emotionally. It also investigates the interrelationships between us and the buildings we inhabit. The structures I make connect these ideas and in doing so, they reflect on the human condition. I aim to pique the viewer’s curiosity, inviting them to look beyond the surface where they may discover intimate spaces that are, at first glance, hidden from view.

The fundamental basis of my work is drawn from my life journey; ultimately it encompasses my personal interactions, experiences and observations.

Jaejun Lee

Working on the wheel actually has limitations to express my thoughts and idea. It is not very easy for me to tell stories through my pots. Although some people have the shapes altered after throwing by carving or giving them pressures, I only tend to work in a circular motion. But this “limitation” is the reason I choose this way of work. Shapes which have been used for a long time give us a comfortable feeling. My objective is to make something useful in everyday life, and thought that things with circular forms would be the most practical ones.

James and Tilla Waters

They are award winning studio potters based in Carmarthenshire,Wales. Their partnership combines James’s making skills withTilla’s love of colour and design. Our practice is rooted in the production of thrown tableware, using both stoneware and porcelain clay bodies. They think it’s important that each piece feels nice in the hand, works well and looks great.They met each other during our apprenticeship with Rupert Spira, and set up their own pottery in 2002.

James Oughtibridge

Curved sections of clay are constructed with numerous planes and perspectives, inviting the viewer to peer inside to a world of contorted shadows. Pieces often appear to float, with no visible flat base creating a tension with their surroundings. The structures, initially overpowering, hold delicate and enticing surfaces, with many hours spent refining, scraping and sanding surfaces to create gentle flowing curves.

Layers of slips, stains and oxides are applied and are fired to 1240°C. The dark and light granulated surface and imposing colour creates shadows and areas that invite a closer inspection.

Jessica Thorn

The aesthetic and design of manufactured metal tins hasn’t changed for over 200 years. Fascinated by this curious fact, Jessica began to design and make ceramic pieces inspired by the characteristics and forms of metal tins through vitrified porcelain. A passion for both cooking and eating has naturally influence Jessica’s functional response within her designs. She is charmed with the simplistic design of tin and enamelware and aims to encapsulate and reminisce vintage kitchenware through her contemporary designs.
The delicate nature of porcelain excited Jessica and seemed the obvious material choice to marry contemporary design with her response to old kitchenware. The experimentation of hand building, colouring and polishing porcelain, allowed her to express and create an honest contemporary response to her obsession with massed produced enamelware.

Julian Stair

Julian Stair is one of the UK’s leading potters and writers on ceramics. He took up pottery at 16 and went on to study at Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited internationally over the last 30 years and has work in over 20 public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum, American Museum of Art & Design, New York, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

From common rituals surrounding death to the daily touch of a cup Stair’s work celebrates the dynamics of use and the way that pottery permeates and is integral to human experience.

A regular contributor to ceramic publications since the 1980s, Julian is an authority on the history of English studio ceramics. In 2002 he completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art researching the critical origins of English studio pottery.

Kate Schuricht

Kate Schuricht is an established British ceramic artist working in raku and stoneware. She studied Three Dimensional Design at the University of Brighton, specialising in ceramics and visual research. After graduating in 1996, Kate was selected for an international ceramic residency in Japan, where she worked alongside established Japanese, Korean and American artists. On her return, Kate set up her business at Cockpit Arts, London, where she was based for nearly 10 years.

Now a Professional Member of the Crafts Potters Association, Kate has completed commissions for a number of private and public collections, including British Airways, the British Embassy in St Petersburg, Craftspace and Cowley Manor. Her work is collected worldwide and features in several printed publications and films. Kate also runs tailor made one-to-one short courses from her studio in West Kent.

Kati Tuominen

Kati Tuominen-Niittylä was born in Helsinki in 1947 and now lives in a small community 50 km from Helsinki in Pornainen. She studied at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki and has worked as an artist and designer since 1980. Her unique pieces are based on memories and observations as well as sentiments. The firing of clay has very long and strong traditions and she brings her works into the modern era side by side with modern materials as part of modern architecture and interior design preserving their ceramic nature. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland and Europe as well as America, Japan and Korea. Her minimalistic and timeless language of forms appears in several serial production products and unique art works.

Keith Varney

My hand built, folded and constructed objects explore form, line, texture and shade. The interplay of changing light and the viewer’s perspective give rise to a shift in perception of the forms; their translucent nature allows the interiors to reflect a sense of luminosity.

Porcelain is a challenging material to work with but the qualities of its surface, its translucency and almost ethereal nature when used in eggshell thin sheets has driven me to investigate its wide potential. By combining elements of slip casting, hand building and origami, I have developed a technique that produces distinctive sculptural objects.

Kiho Kang

My works pursue purity without any unnecessary adornments, with the making process more important than the result. Rather than adding something complicated to this form, so that it only represents its function, I design it as simply as possible. Though the decoration is excluded, the user can enjoy the texture of the ceramic. Pressing with fingers to make the thickness consistent is an awfully time-consuming process. Doing this repetitive process I have taken time for self-examination, which has improved the textural quality of the works.

Lauren Nauman

My work explores the boundaries within clay through experimental processes. I start with the industrial method of plaster moulds and slip-casting; however, I don't always use these in traditional ways. With my current project Lines, I use metal as an aesthetic reference and material contrast. An additive method is used to create pieces with minimal amounts of clay. This body of work became an engaging display of how clay moves in the kiln. The suggestions of vessels start out as straight cages of wet clay and through the power of the kilns heat and the pyroplasticity of the clay, they move like fabric to evolve into a wire-like sculpture that still holds the materiality of porcelain. Due to this process, the final form of each piece stems from minute details in the making, but mostly depends on chance.

Manos Kalamenios

Material is at the centre of my practice. My designs are the products of my experiments in materiality; for me clay is not a static material but a starting point - everything develops from the constant changes in mixture and method. I see myself as an alchemist, exploring material and mining new colours, shapes, and textures from the precise re-calibration of formulas.

It is , I think, this constant testing of material that stimulates my practice and gives my work its strength. I always try to use unconventional materials and tools and utilise them in an unexpected way, stretching their potential.

Matthew Warner

Matthew Warner is a potter who makes simple and considered thrown porcelain tableware. His work combines clarity of form with the subtle nuances of throwing, creating pieces that combine refinement with function. Having studied ceramics at Camberwell College of Art, Matthew currently works as a studio assistant to Julian Stair, based in his London studio. Matthew’s tableware collection includes cups and saucers, milk jugs and teapots as well as complete dinner services which are available to commission.

Natasha Daintry

Natasha’s passion for ceramics began in Tokyo. While studying Japanese at Cambridge, she lived with a Tokyo family who introduced her to pots and the language of materials. After university she abandoned plans for a career in the City and slowly felt her way towards ceramics and art. Handling objects at Christie’s, she realised that she wanted to make things herself. and started with night classes in London and went on to study 3-D Design at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in Farnham.

Now she makes, designs, writes and teaches. At the Royal College of Art, she began exploring colour in an effort to break new ground in the contemporary use of porcelain. Since 2002 she has become known for a decisive and sensitive handling of colour, a quest for exhilaration, and ideas about movement and risk.

Nicholas Lees

Nicholas Lees is a graduate of University of Kent (BA), University of the West of England (BA) and University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (MA). His work has been exhibited widely in the UK and overseas and is held in private and public collections including York City Art Gallery, Westerwald Keramikmuseum in Germany and Royal Caribbean International. He has won several awards including 3rd prize at the Premio Faenza (Italy) in 2003, the National Sculpture Award from the Bluecoat Display Centre in Liverpool in 2010 and the Desmond Preston Prize for Excellence in Drawing at the RCA in 2012. He worked as a Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University between 2000 and 2010 and as a Visiting Lecturer since 2010.

Paul Philp

Paul Philp has been making pottery for forty years. Paul does not coil or use slabs, each piece is built by hand. A slow process, but one which allows the work to evolve naturally. He often combines a mixture of clays which, because of the different shrinking ratios, cause cracking and fissures. Ceramic colours are used only with restraint. Experiments with different forms of crude iron, often combined with tin oxide, have resulted in a range of extraordinary deep red surfaces.

Though all work is fired to about 1260 C, the length and number of firings and the finishing techniques differ as each piece is unique. Many can be fired up to five times. Slips and a very basic dry ash glaze may be applied in varied ways. Dipping, dry glazing over a raw or fired-on slip, creates great difference in the finished result.

As well as developing his skills and ideas as a potter he has spent much of his time learning to build in traditional ways. He is also interested in literature, in ancient culture, oriental art, geology and the natural world and contributed articles to Ceramic Review International Magazine of Ceramics.

Rhian Malin

Inspired by her Grandmother’s Willow Pattern collection, Rhian Malin continues the long historic tradition of hand-painting porcelain with cobalt-blue decoration. Her elegant wheel-thrown porcelain vessels are the chosen surface, created to stretch this tradition in to the 21st Century. The beauty of imperfection is explored through applying geometric patterns to deliberately distorted forms, challenging the inherent perfectionist Rhian is at heart.

Sarah Scampton

Think of clay and the mind connects to the earth; to primitive modelling and to mankind’s first sculpture; to simple vessels hardened by fire in order to bring fluid to lips, food to table; to early experiences of digging hands into damp matter and the joy of forming solid shapes from it. Clay as a baked substance suggests heaviness, solidity, a certain obdurate robustness (despite its fragility when dropped or smashed). Yet Sarah Scampton’s beautiful ceramics defy such expectations. They seem to push at the boundaries of what clay can do. Tall upright vessels emerge from the ground with gossamer-like thinness. Tablets of clay made on the vertical plane appear so fine that their buckling surface might be made from stretched leather or parchment. Enclosed rectangular forms possess subtly undulating walls, suggesting the exhalation of a breath of air within them, gently pushing their contours outwards. What should be heavy appears as light, almost weightless.

Silke Decker

To produce the structure threads are dipped in fluid porcelain and arranged on a plaster model, then slowly built. In the fire the threads burn completely and leave the remaining porcelain network. The structure of the cord remains and gives the cord-porcelain its density. Dissolving the walls of the vessels, transforming them to structures, asks the barely possible of the material and leads Silke Decker to intricate objects.

Silvia K

Silvia K creates a functional range of terracotta tableware and larger vessels. She uses coloured slip mixed from raw materials and handles made from naturally tanned brown British leather. During her studies at the University of Brighton Silvia was awarded an Erasmus Grant and used this to finance her stay her working for a small pottery studio in Centola, Southern Italy. She has gone on to win various awards including the Creazioni Giovani at Artex in Milan and One Year On - New Designers Award, both in 2013.

Tanya Gomez

Tanya’s work looks at large thrown vessels; the pieces are thrown in parts and assembled to produce larger surfaces that are animated through throwing and glazing. Working in porcelain, she uses a range of approaches in her throwing to create forms that will capture qualities of fluidity, movement, and provide a sense of space. Tanya make these works conscious of natural phenomena and dramatic landscapes, absorbing colour, shape, and the diverse qualities of the sea. She has also always lived by the sea and has a studio on the south coast. All of these influences inspire her work.

Tanya McCallin

I came from a profession of artifice and make believe [stage design] and although I always strove to visually tell stories simply and plainly, I longed for a more 'real' and 'solid', less ephemeral material to work with. I like the weight, the smell, the damp cold and the ancient, elemental nature of clay, and the idea that with manual dexterity and thought it can be transformed to form a myriad objects, both functional and sculptural, that can also have narrative, hold memories, be vital and alive.

I try to make objects that satisfy through touch and ideas, which express their purpose and meaning openly and easily without gimmickry or irony. There is a kind of universality in them, something essential and elemental.

Thomas Bohle

Working with clay is an erotic process, not knowing where it will lead. One cannot help but roll with the tide. The ever-changing soft material keeps changing, reacting to every movement of the artist, subtle as it may be, and reflects his inner mood. After burning it lures you into feeling its surface. The attraction remains forever.

Yuta Segawa

Yuta Segawa produces miniature pottery that is small enough to hold in the hand, while maintaining the beautiful forms and colours that are the essence of ceramic pottery. Yuta Segawa, a Japanese artist, uses special techniques he learned in Japan and China. All miniature pots from Yuta Segawa are thrown individually by hand and he uses more than five hundred original glazes he made, so all pots have different character.