Pottery for Sale in London

Simona's home made pottery

I started with pottery in the late 1980s, when I was in highschool. I then went on to study medicine and became an eye doctor, but pottery for me has always represented a healthy balance against my scientific career. An artistic outlet for me from the nine to five grind. I enjoy creating things with my hands and I love the feel of wet clay oozing through my fingers. I've been going to pottery class for three hours every Thursday evening since I started until now. I've even got my kids involved in it and they have adorned our house with many lovely pieces. One of the reasons I like going to class is that I get to meet people, who have a similar passion for pottery but who have very varied backgrounds. Of the various styles of pottery, I prefer hand building mine, without the use of the wheel. I prefer to make primarily functional pieces, such as garden pots, and I prefer stoneware clays and glazes, as they produce more muted colours. Over the years I have amassed quite a collection, giving many to friends, and filling up the shed until my kids refer to it as "mummy's gallery". As an eye doctor I work three days a week so that I can spend more time with my children, but if I can start to sell some of my growing collection, I would enjoy spending more time making pottery, making a second career out of it. I have many pieces which are not on this website, and I can make custom designed ones on commission. Each of my pieces is painstakingly and lovingly created, highly original, and I make them for pleasure rather than business. I'd love to find my pottery pieces in a loving new home.

Information about Pottery

Pottery also includes ceramics, earthenware, stoneware and porcelain, all of which are made in potteries.
Pottery is made from clay, mostly formed by the hand while it is still soft and wet, and then heated in a kiln at high temperatures to change its material quality, making it hard. The clay itself varies from region to region to produce pottery with varying characteristics. Furthermore, the clay itself can be mixed with different minerals to create different effects.

History of Pottery

The earliest known pottery was produced 25 to 29,000 years before Christ in what is now modern day Czech Republic (where I was born), of a figurine of a naked woman named Venus of Dolni Vestonice . The earliest known pottery vessels were made in Japan in 10,500 BC. Pottery was independently discovered in North Africa around 10,000 BC, and in South America around the seventh millennium before Christ.
Some time between 4,000 and 6,500 BC, the invention of the potter’s wheel in Mesopotamia, what is now modern day Iraq and the starting point of civilisation, revolutionised the industry and helped feed the growing needs of the world’s first cities.
In the early days, the pottery was heated in bonfires, or holes in the ground covered with fuel, reaching temperatures of around 900 degrees Celsius.
Since designs are used to adorn pottery, and because pottery was invented and proves very useful for storing food, liquids and other important commodities, it has become useful for archaeologists in mapping out ancient cultures with their economic and social structures. Especially since pottery tends to last much longer than other objects, such as wooden tools and textiles. The thermoluminescence test then accurately identifies the exact date of the pottery according to its last firing. Examining the iron materials in ancient pottery shards has even revealed to scientists the exact state of the earth’s magnetic field at the time of firing!

On a more local level, around the time of the first industrial revolution, taking place in the United Kingdom, the city of Stoke on Trent became known as The Potteries, where in 1785 its 200 pottery manufacturers employed some twenty thousand labourers.

How to Make Pottery

When the clay has a specific dryness of around 75 to 85%, it becomes “leather hard”, when it can be more easily moulded into shape and to which other pieces can be added. Over the centuries of this trade many tools have been invented to aid in the moulding process, the most important of which is the potter’s wheel , where the spinning mass of clay in the centre of the wheel can be formed into a vase or other similar vessel with a consistent circumference. While some prefer the consistency and speed of the potter’s wheel, arguing for the spontaneity of shape formed while the wheel spins, others prefer to form shapes in the manner before the wheel was invented: from ground up in a standing and stagnant position, arguing that this method produces more individually unique pottery subject to a more robust imagination.
When using the wheel, it requires a certain amount of skill to first centre the clay, then to open it by creating a hollow dip in the centre, then to create a floor with a rounded bottom inside, then to throw the clay by drawing it upwards to shape walls of even thickness, and finally to trim and turn it by removing excess clay and refining its shape into its final form.
Although the wheel can speed up work and aid in creating more consistently similar shapes, the general shapes themselves are more limited to ones with radial symmetry and a vertical axis. But handles, lids and other extremities can be added at the end, or the produced shape can itself be distorted by bulging and other methods, to create greater uniqueness.
Over time, machines have been invented to replace or aid the potter’s hand, speeding up production further, but while simplifying any individuality, or removing unique traits.
Once the final shape is complete, the pottery can be decorated by incising patterns on its surface, embedding on it foreign objects (such as with seashells in my Item 12 or 18 above), and eventually glazing and colouring it in any number of ways.
Prior to glazing, additives such as sand can be mixed into the clay, creating particular textures once the pottery is heated and glazed. Combustible particles can even be mixed in or pressed onto the surface to produce different effects during heating.
Mixing different clays of different colours can also produce interesting results, referred to as “agateware”, after the quartz mineral agate which has bands or layers of different color blended together. In this process, the potter is careful not to overmix the different clays so that the individual colours are distinguishable, and the choice of clays is also important as they must have similar thermal movement characteristics during the heating stage in the kiln.
Prior to heating in the kiln, the pottery can also be finely polished, referred to as burnishing.
The next stage, still before heating, can be engobing, which is to add on a layer over top of the pottery, often by dipping the entire shape into a bath, or by painting it on the pottery’s surface - a method used since pre-historic times. This outer clay slip is often high in silica, and can be incised with engravings to pierce through the new surface, revealing colours of the clay beneath. A second clay slip of different colour can be further added, and later incised, to produce patterns of different colour, much like the procedure used when making Easter eggs.
Another method of applying design to the surface is similar to lithography, whereby an image or colour on a decorative design layer is applied to the surface using a backing paper, printed onto the surface much like screen printing. Once the design has been transferred, a protective layer is applied, which may include a low-melting glass.
After this, gold can be applied or painted on in various ways for extra fancy pottery.
And finally, we have the glazing stage, which coats the pottery with a protective, colourful and decorative surface. Its colour and appearance often changes during heating, and the sealed result protects the inner clay from destructive moisture or water. Different minerals and application techniques can be used to produce different effects, giving the pottery its final touch and personality.

Once the clay mould has been prepared, the object is then subjected to firing, which is the process of heating the vessel at different temperatures to harden it, after which it can be called pottery. Different materials require different temperatures, but all firing is generally at or above 1000 degrees centigrade. There can be several stages of firing, which fuse together different minerals, while regulating air intake into the kiln can produce different degrees of oxidation of the clay and outer glaze.

Useful External Links about Pottery in London

http://londonpottersguild.org/offer/sales.htm - Each spring and Christmas season, pottery lovers from around the region are drawn to the London Potters Guild show and sale. Over 30 local potters participate in these sales, selling both sculptural and functional pieces.
http://www.studiopottery.co.uk/html/events6.html - calendar of events concerning pottery in the London, UK area.
http://www.studiopottery.co.uk/html/rgal-london.html - list of gallery events from the same website.
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmah/Englishceramics.htm - Information or research assistance regarding English from the Smithsonian Institution.
http://www.potsherd.uklinux.net/atlas/Ware/LEST - Atlas and information of Roman pottery in the London-Essex area.
http://www.studio-pots.com/ - One of the few galleries in the UK exhibiting both contemporary and classical Studio Ceramics.
http://www.potfest.co.uk/courses.htm - links to various pottery courses in the UK.

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Here are the links to the individual pages of my London pottery: