Bernard Howell Leach was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery".
The term "ethical pot" was coined by Oliver Watson in his book Studio Pottery: Twentieth Century British Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum to describe a 20th-century trend in studio pottery that favoured plain, utilitarian ceramics. Watson said that the ethical pot,"lovingly made in the correct way and with the correct attitude, would contain a spiritual and moral dimension." Its leading proponents were Bernard Leach and a more controversial group of post-war British studio potters. They were theoretically opposed to the expressive pots or fine art pots of potters such as William Staite Murray, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper.
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.
Ursula Frances Elinor Mommens was an English potter. Mommens studied at the Royal College of Art, under William Staite Murray, and later worked with Michael Cardew at Winchcombe Pottery and Wenford Bridge Pottery.
Michael Ambrose Cardew (1901–1983), was an English studio potter who worked in West Africa for twenty years.
Seth Cardew was an English studio potter. He was the eldest son of fellow potter Michael Cardew and the brother of the composer Cornelius Cardew.
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. By the time she died she was regarded as "one of the world's greatest contemporary potters". She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the US, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. But in the 1980s she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.
Mark Hewitt is an English-born studio potter living in the small town of Pittsboro, North Carolina outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2015 he received a United States Artist Fellowship, for contributions to the creative landscape and arts ecosystems of the country. He was a finalist for the 2015 Balvenie Rare Craft Fellowship Award, for contributions to the maintenance and revival of traditional or rare craft techniques. In 2014 he was awarded a Voulkos Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, for outstanding contributions to the ceramic arts.
Ladi Kwali or Ladi Dosei Kwali, OON NNOM, MBE was a Nigerian potter, ceramicist and educator.
Wenfordbridge, or Wenford Bridge, is a hamlet some 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Bodmin and on the western flank of Bodmin Moor, in Cornwall, England. It takes its name from an old granite bridge over the River Camel, and lies on the border between the parishes of St Breward and St Tudy.
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.
Clive Bowen is a Devon based potter whose work is included in a number of public collections.
Ray Finch MBE, formally Alfred Raymond Finch, was an English studio potter who worked at Winchcombe Pottery for a period spanning seventy-five years.
Philip Rogers was a Welsh studio potter who has been featured in a number of books on studio pottery and worked at Lower Cefnfaes Farm's Marston Pottery from 1984 until his death in December 2020 and previously in Rhayader, Powys, Wales, from 1978 to 1984.
Ian Broun Sprague (1920–1994) was an Australian twentieth-century studio potter, ceramic sculptor and graphic artist. Delayed by the Second World War and a false start in architecture, he spent (broadly) his forties adapting Australian domestic pottery to a Japanese aesthetic of contemplative use; his fifties as a sculptor in two- and three-dimensional pottery; his sixties and seventies making landscape works on paper.
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.
John Reeve was a Canadian studio potter.
