STUDIO CERAMICS: FIRST STEPS
Jason Wood, consultant specialist for Adam Partridge Auctioneers & Valuers, spends a lot of time visiting ceramics shows and open studios to stay up to date with what’s happening in the field and to keep his eye in. For those starting out on the studio ceramics trail he advocates visiting shows such as Potfest (potfest.co.uk), mounted in Cumbria and Perth, Scotland every year. There’s also Art in Clay (artinclay.co.uk), held annually at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, and the prestigious Ceramic Art London (ceramics.org.uk) and York (ceramicartyork.org) shows, organised by the Craft Potters Association.
Says Wood: ‘The best way to form a deeper understanding and appreciation of studio pottery from all eras, and to decide what you like, is to handle the pieces and see in detail the form, the glazes and the decoration. You will start to notice subtle details such as weight and finish – how does it feel to hold? With pottery that’s not top quality you might find that there’s too much clay on the base, or the walls are too thin, or that the glaze has spalled because the clay was not dry enough before firing. It takes an awful lot of skill to create good pieces of studio pottery.’ If you want to enter the market at a higher level, in the low thousands of pounds, look at the prices achieved by a variety of top potters, past and present, at auction. Marijke Varrall-Jones of Maak suggests: ‘Jennifer Lee, Alison Britton, Gordon Baldwin, Colin Pearson, Ewen Henderson and Edmund de Waal are seeing a surge in interest with strong prices achieved at auction, often due to prominent exhibitions promoting the artist to new global audiences.’