38 THE MASTER POTTER PAUL MOSSMAN

Unlikely as it may seem for a potter to get their big career break in a Cumbrian service station, that’s what happened to Paul Mossman. He credits Tebay Services – the UK’S only family-run service station, opened in the 1970s – with kickstarting his business. It was here that chef Simon Rogan first spotted Mossman’s robust, beautifully organic stoneware. The potter now supplies the restaurant at Rogan’s picturesque riverside hotel L’enclume, as well as Fera at Claridge’s and department store Harvey Nichols.

Mossman opened his studio on the site of an old coalmine in Staveley, Chesterfield, in 1994. The speckled glazes, irregular shapes and rough edges characteristic of his work are influenced by ‘my beloved Derbyshire gritstone edges [craggy cliffs] and Lakeland hills on frosty moonlit walks’. He favours local materials, personalising his glazes with limestone from the Peak District, clay from nearby rivers and ash from his own kiln fires.

Paul takes commissions and, in his words, ‘if it can be eaten off or drunk from’, he’s ‘probably made it’ (paulmossman pottery.co.uk).