Guest Potter of the Month - Simon Garne

Starting Date: 01/08/2010

Dates: 1st to 31st August

Times: Mon - Fri 9am to 5pm, Saturdays 10am to 4pm, Sundays 11am to 4pm

After completing an apprenticeship and gaining 10 years throwing experience at Whichford Pottery, Simon has recently taken on the challenges of setting up his own workshop on the farm where he lives at the edge of the Cotswolds.

Throwing with earthenware for many years, using traditional Roman throwing techniques which command speed, control and strength, producing pots from 2 inches to 4 foot tall, has allowed Simon to produce a strong foundation to transfer these skills to porcelain and stoneware.

This new body of work, reflects Simon's love of Georgian architecture and Georgian glass rummers, themselves a fusion of styles brought back from all over the world.

The use of an air-brush over high temperature stoneware and porcelain allows Simon to blend and fuse different glazes and oxides to create unique textures and colours on the surface of his work, in the same sense that the Georgians would fuse influences from different parts of the world.

Guest Potter of the Month - Joy Bosworth

Starting Date: 01/09/2010

Dates: 1st - 30th September

Times: Mon - Fri 9am to 5pm, Saturdays 10am to 4pm, Sundays 11am to 4pm

The new work on show at Whichford, is informed by manufactured objects, fabricated in a variety of sheet materials. Constructed from extruded elements and textured sheets of clay, the joins and marks of the making process become part of the composition.

The vessels are essentially monochrome, cream of black/brown with splashes of grey, black or white slip. They are fired to 1100 degrees centigrade in an electric kiln with transparent glaze.

Guest Potter of the Month - John Calver

Starting Date: 01/10/2010

Dates: 1st - 31st October

Times: Mon - Fri 9am to 5pm, Saturdays 10am to 4pm, Sundays 11am to 4pm

John Calver was drawn to stoneware because of the nature of the firing process. The high temperatures and smoky atmosphere produce exciting, and sometimes unpredictable, reactions from the glazes. His delight in these glaze qualities, together with his fascination with devising ceramic tools, has led to the particular decorative qualities and rich colour palette of his work.

Most of his pots are classically simple functional shapes thrown on the wheel. Occasionally the freshly thrown pots are altered dynamically to produce one of the signature forms for which he is well known.

Christmas Show in The Octagon

Starting Date: 19/11/2010

Dates: Friday 19th November to Friday 24th December

Times: Mon - Fri 9am to 5pm, Saturdays 10am to 4pm, Sundays 11am to 4pm

A great opportunity to choose from a dynamic selection of ceramics by well-known makers.

Jacqui Atkin - Jacqui's work is hand built using various making techniques, with the surfaces burnished to a high sheen. The bisque fired work is patterned using masking techniques before smoke or resist raku firing.

Gwen Bainbridge - Gwen's work is a three-dimensional scrap-book coming from both memories of her childhood and from her response to the experiences brought about through research in books, rummaging through bric-a-brac, antique fairs, old photographs and magazines. "I'm always on the lookout for items that I might use in my work, both for inspiration and for direct practical use. I find that nature itself seems too perfect to try to reproduce. I tend to explore the work of craftsmen of the past who themselves might have been first inspired by the natural world. I also appreciate the finery of the costumes of bygone eras, and the distinctive qualities of their production."

Daphne Carnegy - An apprenticeship in France and several visits to Italy introduced me to the delights of earthenware and in particular tin-glazed ware, often referred to as 'maiolica'. For me, the attraction of maiolica lies in its unique qualities - a softness, depth and luminosity not to be found in other ceramics. The many variable elements - body, glaze and pigment thickness, firing temperature - all conspire to create continual surprises (sometimes good, sometimes not so good) on opening the kiln.

Lisa Katzenstein - Lisa Katzenstein's pieces are slip-cast or press-moulded white earthenware with hand painted 'tin-glaze' decoration. Where Lisa's work differs from traditional Majolica is in the way she employs it as a medium for painting in its own right. Using wax resist and sgraffito techniques that inlay the lines of her designs with colour, as in etching. "In my work I'm trying to revive the status of floral decoration, but "floral" with a modern twist. I try to convey beauty but also thorniness and invasiveness, a walk in the country, not in the park."

Mandy Livesley - Mandy's work represents the progression of organic decay displayed by dried flora. The skeletal appearance of Chinese lanterns were a starting point of her exploration, leading to experimentation with bone china slips. Dried flowers, seed pods and grasses are dipped in china slip and then high fired, transforming each piece into translucent fragile replica of the real thing. Paper porcelain panels or vessels create a background for the finished pieces, all covered with a subtle translucent glaze to preserve natural appearances.