Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.
Dame Lucie Rie, was an Austrian-born, independent, British studio potter working in a time when most ceramicists were male. She is known for her extensive technical knowledge, her meticulously detailed experimentation with glazes and with firing and her unusual decorative techniques.
Dora May Billington (1890–1968) was an English teacher of pottery, a writer and a studio potter. Her own work explored the possibilities of painting on pottery.
The Craft Potters Association (CPA) is an association of potters formed in 1958 in London. It has two wholly owned operating companies: Craftsmen Potters Trading Company Ltd and Ceramic Review Publishing Ltd.
Alan Caiger-Smith MBE was a British ceramicist, studio potter and writer on pottery.
Julian Francis Stair is an English potter, academic and writer. He makes groups of work using a variety of materials, from fine glazed porcelain to coarse engineering brick clays. His work ranges in scale from hand-sized cups and teapots to monumental jars at over 6 feet tall and weighing half a ton.
Karen Karnes was an American ceramist, best known for her salt glazed, earth-toned stoneware ceramics.
Ladi Kwali or Ladi Dosei Kwali, OON NNOM, MBE was a Nigerian potter, ceramicist and educator.
The Aberystwyth University Ceramic Collection & Archive is located in Aberystwyth, Wales. It holds one of the major collections of studio ceramics in Britain and is particularly noted for its studio pottery of the period 1920–1940. The permanent and temporary exhibitions from the collection are on display in the Ceramic Gallery in Aberystwyth Arts Centre and the archive office is located in the School of Art, Aberystwyth University. The Ceramic Bulletin is produced every two years by the university and it features news of activities including exhibitions, new acquisitions, research, awards and grants.
Maija (Majlis) Grotell was an influential Finnish-American ceramic artist and educator. She is often described as the "Mother of American Ceramics."
Elizabeth Fritsch CBE is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture.
Lisa Hammond is a British studio potter.
Ray Finch MBE, formally Alfred Raymond Finch, was an English studio potter who worked at Winchcombe Pottery for a period spanning seventy-five years.
William Alfred Ismay was a librarian, writer and collector in Wakefield, West Yorkshire known for his significant collection of post-war studio pottery. The collection called the W.A. Ismay Collection was bequeathed to the Yorkshire Museum and is one of the world's largest collections of 20th-century studio pottery. It includes work by Bernard Leach, Hans Coper, Shoji Hamada, Takeshi Yasuda, David Leach Dan Arbeid and Lucie Rie.
Jack Doherty is a Northern Irish studio potter and author. He is perhaps best known for his vessels made of soda-fired porcelain. He has been featured in a number of books, and his work has been exhibited widely in both Europe and North America. Articles of his have appeared in various pottery journals and he has been Chair of the Craft Potters Association.
Kate Olivia Malone is a British ceramic artist known for her large sculptural vessels and rich, bright glazes. Malone was previously a judge, along with Keith Brymer Jones, on BBC2's The Great Pottery Throw Down (2015–2017), then presented by Sara Cox.
Donald Lester Reitz was an American ceramic artist, recognized for inspiring a reemergence of salt glaze pottery in United States. He was a teacher of ceramic art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1962 until 1988. During this period, he adapted the pottery firing technique developed in the Middle Ages, which involved pouring salt into the pottery kiln during the firing stage. The method was taught in European ceramic art schools, but largely unknown in United States studio pottery.
The Coxwold Pottery was a pottery studio based in the village of Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England, launched by artist potters Peter and Jill Dick in 1965, and in operation until 2012.
Denise Wren was an Australian-born British studio potter and craftsperson. Wren was one of the first female studio potters in Britain. She studied and taught with the Kingston School of Art, Knox Guild and Camberwell College of Arts. Wren and her family subsequently set up the Oxshott Pottery and wrote on the subjects of ceramics, textiles and making.
Jennifer Elizabeth Lee is a Scottish ceramic artist with an international reputation. Lee's distinctive pots are hand built using traditional pinch and coil methods. She has developed a method of colouring the pots by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Her work is held in over forty museums and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2018 Lee won the Loewe Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson in 2017. The prize was presented to her at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London.
