Quality the name of the game at Celebrating Ceramics

Pots of gold at new Waterperry festival

INCREDIBLY, the weekend’s Celebrating Ceramics was the first ceramics festival to be launched in this country for 10 years.
And for ceramics collectors like me, it was a real treat – with exceptional quality work on show by every one of the 100-odd exhibitors in six open-sided marquees, in front of Waterperry House. The work encompassed a diverse range of clays, styles and techniques – from hand-built to thrown, decorative and functional, delicate porcelain to robust stoneware, salt-glaze to lustre. There were ongoing talks and demonstrations, including raku firings, and once you started to flag, you could refuel at South African street food, Japanese sushi and Italian pizza stalls. With so many potters from across the country, it was great to renew old aquaintainces and to touch base with two local Open Studios artists – Emily Myers, whose faceted and carved thrown stoneware vessels are domestic in scale but sculptural in feel, and Teresa Munn, who writes with porcelain, her porcelain scripted bowl-shaped forms cast intriguing shadows. I unfortunately missed a session with the master of lustre decoration Alan Caiger Smith, who trained 60 potters over 50 years at our own Aldermasaton Pottery.
I hope the festival continues to grow and becomes a permanent date in the
Waterperry diary.

Teresa is part of Ceramic Art Whitway, a permanent exhibition space housed within a working studio and open on Wednesdays throughout the year. July is the last chance to see guest potter Katherine Kingdon’s charming, quirky characters in clay. The invited guest for the remainder of the summer will be Hungerford-based artist Lone Hudson, with contemporary stoneware vessels and bowls.