Author: Roop

9th-11th May 2025, Olympia West, London.

A few images and a video from our stand at Ceramic Art London this year.

Having spent a fair amount of time in London, but the last 20 or so years in rural Devon, the “Big City” feels familiar yet complicated, smart, exciting, noisy, young and old all at once. It is always nice to be back and get a small dose of that again. Though most of the time we were in Olympia at the show, getting out in the evenings, catching up with fellow potters and soaking up some of London is a real pleasure.

CAL attracts potters from around the UK and Europe and as far afield as South Korea. Shows like this are an opportunity to show new pieces to an audience that doesn’t necessarlily travel far from the metropolis. It also attracts an audience of about the same range as the exhibitors, though with more of a focus on London and the South East. A programme of talks and panel discussions attract the interested public, students, academics and collectors alike and it is all hosted in a big, light airy space which allows one to see the work well, even when there are quite a lot of people there.

For us, it is also a great way to see the work of some amazing potters and catch up with maker friends and talk ceramics. Here are some images of the stands around us and some of others whose work we managed to take photos of. The standard of work there was so high and so varied that it really makes for a unique opportunity to catch a glimpse of what is going on in ceramics now in the UK and beyond.

Photos above (from left to right): Stands at CAL 2025, Juliet Macleod & Tanya Gomez, Thomas Bohle, Bjork Haraldsdottir, Jin Eui Kim.

Photos above (from left to right): Moyra Stewart, Sue Mundy, Tony Laverick, Sharon Griffin & In Ho Song.

So now it is 2025 and we are busy in the workshop following a slightly disturbed run up to Christmas (storm Darragh and consequent 5 day power cut) and another big sort out for New Year and the installation of the new kilns. They are now in and working and we are making new things to put in them.

So here they are, delivered, installed and checked by the Northern Kilns team who did a great job. After not having had a new kiln for over 20 years, it feels slightly strange to be getting used to new ones, almost as if they shouldn’t be used. However a few firings will get us over that and already the Top Loader (Lucie) and the Front Loader (Bernard) are getting a few firings under thier belts.

The last piece of the current puzzle is the slab roller, which will be coming in March. Looking forward to having that in the workshop to make some new pieces and help in the production of tiles especially.

Much of Christmas and New Year has been another bout of tidying and reorganising the workshop to make space for the new kilns. That has been realky good for us, making us reallly think about what we use regularly and what we havent used for some time. We have had to be a bit ruthless, but it feels important to do this so we can move forward and make space for new work and ideas.

Already some new tall pieces are in production, which feels really exciting as we haven’t been able to make anything like this for a very long time as we never had the kiln space.

For quite a while now we have been thinking and working on a project to give the studio a boost to help us make better use of the space for our work and the students who use it.

As is ever the case when you make things, the space you work in can become quite full, especially if there are other people in there too! So periodically we have a clear out. But even then it is still pretty full. For quite a while we have needed to use the height of the workshop to create more storage space for artwork, packaging & other boring stuff, which currently takes up space which should be better used for current work and equipment we use all the time.

Our main tools, the kilns and wheels have mostly been with us since the start of our business in 2001 and so have seen quite a lot of use, especially in the last few years. They have been showing their age and though they have been very relaible workhorses for us, may soon become less so.

We have been keen also to have both a bigger and a smaller kiln so we can fire bigger, more ambitious pieces as well as fire more regularly in a smaller kiln to allow ideas and work to proceed more quickly.

Our studio has been amazing in letting us develop a teaching side to our business and in one area we have always needed more resource, which is throwing (and the wheels to throw on). There has often been a queue for the wheels we have and sometimes, when running specialist throwing classes, I have had to borrow a wheel or 2 locally.

Aside from all that, we have been in the workshop for 6 years now and know how it works and what would make it (and us) work better, so it seems like it is high time we did those things!

Equipment like kilns and wheels cost and so we began to look for ways to help us fund the purchase of what we needed. We came across the “Mid Devon Prosperity Fund” in our searches and made an initial Expression of Interest and and later an application, which we are delighted to say, was successful!

So we have ordered the kilns and purchased the wheels and have begun the 1st part of the tidy up and reorganisation of the workshop. The second part is to follow soon with the installation of the kilns and in this part we hope also to begin to work on further storage capacity.

We still need to do some fundraising to help with the second part of the project and are hoping to launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding bid in the next few weeks. There will be plenty of new pots as rewards as well as other goodies, which we have been planning for a while. Keep an eye out for it on our Instagram page and of course on our website.

Back In May 2024, we were at Olympia West for Ceramic Art London, where we had an amazing time. A new venue and a long time since we had exhibited at CAL, so it was great to be there and see an audience with a more cosmopolitain, international flavour as well as a great selection of international makers too.

Two of the visitors Roop met introduced themselves as being from a ceramic school in Spain and after a short discussion, would we be interested in coming to the school to teach a workshop at some point later in the year.

A few weeks later the Carolina and Dolors got back in touch and after some Instagram DM’s and Zoom calls we arranged to come out in August and teach a week long decorating and making workshop.

The school, “Escola de Ceramica de la Bisbal”, was set up in 1972 by Dolors Ros Y Frigola. Situated just outside the pottery town of La Bisbal D’Emporda about forty minutes east of Girona in North East Spain, the school has taught a wide range of students for over 50 years training generations of potters for the local industry and also aspiring potters from across Spain and Europe.

We arrived in Barcelona on the Sunday night and were in the studio on monday morning at 8am to prepare for the students at nine. A little nervous and also a bit tired we launched into a day of making aquaintances with our students and the school and also the materials we would be using; local clay and slips, a yellow ochre sandy clay mined within sight of the workshop. Carolina, Brazilian and speaking at least 4 languages was our translator, as our Spanish is patchy and it was the same for the English of some of the students. Lots of gesticulation and a Spanish/English pottery dictionary soon emerged. After a while we realised that everyone who couldn’t speak Spanish or English could speak French, including us, which helped a lot.

It was hot….35 degrees on average and so we were delighted on many fronts to have an air conditioned studio. Partly for us and partly for the tiles which would have dried way too quickly in the heat otherwise. None the less we managed to make and decorate and fire not only a tile panel but also a handbuilt piece as well – all in 6 days. It must be a record!!!

Many thanks to Carolina for all her amazing assistance and guidance throughout the week. To Dolors for her amazing school and her incredible expertise, Patricia for her amazing organisation, Luis the cook for the wonderful food and Luis the kiln technician for all his hard work firing everything overnight on Friday/Saturday in the electric and gas kiln. Josep and the other teachers for their friendly welcome and expertise.

Thank you also too to all the students who took the course with us. Everyone was amazing and we have very fond memories of our week at the school. We hope to be back soon.

Soon we hope to write more about what we saw there, including the Museum of Terracotta in La Bisbal D’Emporda and the town itself….so many similarities in the slipware made there and in North Devon.

As many of you reading this will know, one part of what we do is teach from our workshop. Since we moved to the “not so new anymore” workshop, we have been slowly developing our workshops and courses and have a really fantastic group of students making wonderful things on a regular basis.

We teach a number of different courses, from regular day and evening classes to specific decoration courses with Alice, throwing and also have started to host workshops featuring guest makers and experts. You can find out more about all this here, and also navigate further on to look at specific workshops.

We really enjoy having folks in the workshop. The ideas and energy that the classes generate is wonderful and it feels like we are all building a small but enthusiastic community of keen potters, which is fantastic. So we wanted to highlight some of the great work going on and “big up” the skills, ideas and inventiveness of all of the students. Here are a few, but by no means all of the wonderful pieces and makers working over the last few months. Apologies if I have missed you out, it is just what I have taken photos of recently (when I remember!)

Most of these are from the Day & Evening Classes we run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. In these images we have: Rossy handbulding a flower vase, Sue decorating her jug, Victoria’s wonderful wide bowl form, Alan and Dawn throwing with Amanda in the background and Caroline decorating some of her bowls.

From the top left: Casserole and Jug form by Laura and Tyrone, Sue, Sarah & Kathryn making, Rachel’s fantastic Minoan inspired sculpture and Kathryn’s completed handbuilt forms.

Finally, here’s a great picture of Alan and our chalk board on the workshop wall with some of pottery commandments we try to live by in the workshop.

16/12/23 – 2/3/24

In 2022, Roop was commissioned by the Burton to respond to the theme of the environment and climate change. The “Water Vessels – Sampling the Torridge” exhibition, is the culmination of the first stage of the project.

This project begins to tell a story about the geology, environment and ecology of River Torridge from its source in North West Devon to the estuarine mouth in Bideford. The story is told through a collection of ceramic vessels made and glazed from materials found in the water or by its banks.

The hot, dry summer of 2022 proved to be a tricky time to be sampling water from the river and so some of the initial ideas had to change in order to be able to collect some useable data.

The original idea was to use only water data, but timescale, resource and access issues meant that I began by mostly collecting material from the side of the river where I could more easily get permission to access the land for a short period.

Having collected material, I spent time in the workshop developing glazes and making forms inspired by my time walking and sampling. The show comprises of a combination of the final pieces made as a result of the exploration and also all of the tests and documentation of the exploration, sampling and experimentation that I did.

If you have a chance in the next month or so, do go and see the fantastic Louise Bourgois show that is in the main gallery and also take a chance to see this more locally inspired one too. For more background, check out a series of blog posts I wrote here.

Burton Art Gallery Environmental Commission – Sampling the Torridge

In trying to cover what is happening in the workshop a bit more regularly , here are some images of some more recent handbuilding work going on. I am really enjoying handbuilding and am feeling that there are several strands of ideas progressing simutaneously. These ideas weave in and out of each other, having a fairly eclectic range of influences that often overlap.

An interest in Geology, time, scale and material. My roots, stories, folklore and myth. The act of making and letting things go. That’s enough to be going on with I think….

Most of these will be vessel forms or candleabra and will have a playful quality in them. A bit fanciful, baroque, naive, surreal maybe? They follow on from previous pieces which you can see on our instagram feed that sold at Ceramics in the City at the beginning of the month.

Lately, a very dear friend from the Isle of Skye came to visit and, as he is a keen sea swimmer, we spent the time exploring the coastline for sea swimming possibilities. Here are some images of Northcott Mouth, on the North Cornwall coast. There are some amazing examples of folded strata all along this coast right up to Hartland Quay and I have always loved the way the bedrock is weathered by the action of the sea into these rounded rows of teeth protruding from the sand. In some of the cliffs you can see the ripples of fossilised mud & sand, laid down over 100 million years ago. Just amazing.