Andrew Hill

An unrepentant fire merchant, Andrew’s chief area of interest is with the magnificent glaze effects he has developed. He chooses simple forms that lack ornamentation and which will carry the rich colours and patterns with ease. Much of his current work takes its inspiration from nature; he favours autumnal colours and there is a sense of poetry in the fact that plant material is used in the post-firing reduction process.

Raku - New Directions 

Treston Holmes

Treston Holmes’ formative years were spent absorbing the music, architecture, ambience at the Winchester College Choir school set in a beautiful area of water meadows and downlands. The appreciation of music and natural history have stayed with him and greatly influenced his work. He went on to study the sciences and then taught in Somerset where he was given the task of introducing ceramics into the curriculum and a fascination developed. Technical courses followed, tutored by George Holland, David Winkley and Waistel Cooper. Much of the work is influenced by Roman, Greek and Etruscan forms as well as African and American Indian work. Modern makers such as Hans Coper, Lucy Rie, Ladi Kwali and Madeline Odundo have also had their influence mainly for form but also for their use of texture, colour and decoration.

Niek Hoogland

Potters have used clay at Tegelen in the south of the Netherlands – where Niek was born and raised – since Roman times. Inspired to become a potter by his next-door-neighbour who was a production thrower, it was, however, only in 1984 after much travelling from Afghanistan to Egypt, that he decided to train. From day one delighting in the materials and processes of clay, he knew it was his vocation. The local red clay that he uses has its roots in slipware, which was the basis of the booming trade in Teglen through the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Hoogland is inspired by this tradition – the free way in which the slipware potters worked with their clay and decoration. Hoogland likes the marks left by digging his fingers into the clay to emphasise its innate plasticity. Ideas for decoration spring from a large variety of sources such as folk art, posters and textiles or painters like Pierre Alechinsky or Aad de Haas. A seasoned exhibitor, his work appears in private and public collections across Europe and America.

Joanna Howells

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Raku - New Directions 

Anne James

‘I draw a lot at exhibitions and galleries, and whilst on holiday. The drawings are rarely used directly, but I often look through sketchbooks, and over a long period I know that ideas and feeling filter into the work and gradually change what I do.’ Although modern in interpretation, there is a timelessness to the work that derives from many years of considered observation. My first workshop was set up in Gloucestershire in 1976 where I made domestic stoneware and later, small decorative pieces in high fired porcelain. In 1985 I became interested in raku and smoked lustres, and worked with glazed Raku for a time. My present work is unglazed raku. My ideas come from many sources including the traditions of pot making which use burnishing, such as the African, native American and Mediteranian civilizations. My interest in textiles has influenced the surface of the pots, particularly tribal and nomadic embroideries and weaving of Africa, Japan and India. Object from ethnographic collections, tools axe heads etc and at the other end of the scale, modern architecture sculpture, landscape and natural forms are all influences and over the years many sketch books provide reference and inspiration.

Raku - New Directions