Carrie feels the greatest connection from working with clay through hand building. From delicately durable functional ceramics made of slabs of porcelain white stoneware, hand squeezed handles, and bright contemporary patterns and glazes, to coil built one off sculptural vessels and forms. She uses a variety of firing methods including post fired reduction raku to produce rich turquoises and aged white crackle glazes that contrast with carbon blacks.

Karen Howarth is a ceramic artist based in the Colne Valley, West Yorkshire, where she draws inspiration from the natural beauty of the Pennine landscape. Her work is a reflection of this environment, translating the sense of calm she finds in nature into her work.

I take my inspiration from landscapes created over millions of years by water and ice erosion. These patterns seen in nature especially topography and contour lines influenced my first pieces producing strong stylized surfaces. Development during the last 6 years has led to the exploration of different techniques with an increasing emphasis on the textural qualities of clay I respond to each unique piece, allowing the patterns to evolve over several weeks.
I work in predominately stoneware and after the surface development and application of colour the pieces are fired and finished with a museum wax or clear glaze

Danny O’Connor is a wood-firing potter living on the edge of the Lake District. His work is thrown in small batches on a momentum kick wheel. Each making cycle ends with a two day firing in an anagama-style kiln, encouraging unique effects from the flame.

I studied for my Art Degree in the 70s, and then did
an apprenticeship with Mary Wandrausch the
slipware potter, followed by work in various
therapeutic settings, which led me into social work.
After thirty years I escaped to set up my own studio
in 2013, and have taught and produced my own
work in various locations around Huddersfield. I
realised my dream of wood firing with a friend
during Covid, and every firing continues to give me
a huge buzz!

I am a potter based in Marsden in the South Pennines. I work in stoneware and porcelain and produce functional and decorative studio pottery in small batches. My work is almost exclusively thrown on the potters wheel, which allows me to make the precise forms that characterise my practice. These pieces are then subtlety enhanced with surface decoration and glaze combinations.

The trajectory of life involves a gradual accumulation of damage and loss. It comforts me to reflect on this through my work.
Whilst I am strongly drawn to the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, I need to make objects that show deliberate accidents and intentional damage. I am just as happy creating this through form as I am through surface.
These are the things that I want to suround me. And it gives me immense pleasure if others see some truth in them and take them into their homes. I believe that they recognise something that I see and feel. I enjoy that moment of connection, of communication.

My latest pieces have been an exploration of emotions, how they contrast and how
we try to hide our genuine feelings. My Earth Mothers explore the female form and
our curves especially during pregnancy.
Burnishing or polishing the clay is my therapy, using crystals and spoons to shine the
drying clay’s surface, finally, achieving a beautiful sheen. I apply no glazes in my
work, I use smoke and combustibles, saggar or naked Raku firing.
I have been awarded the ‘Ceramic prize’ during Holmfirth ArtWeek 2025, an award I
am truly delighted to receive.

I have always enjoyed exploring ideas in clay but only recently taken it a bit more seriously and now have an extra studio space in Slaithwaite where I can do this. I would say that I am at the stage of learning about this medium every time something goes into the kiln. I prefer to hand build and to make sculptural work around animals and birds. I am a full time artist and I supply galleries with silver jewellery and mixed media sculpture work.

Gill Rogers makes thrown stoneware for the home. Forms are functional and tactile. Decoration explores the feelings and mood of the country landscape and rhythms of nature.
Gill uses a toasty speckled stoneware often in part, creating a tactile textural change between clay and glaze.
The colour palette is mossy and rich greens of rolling hills, dark jewel like blues of deep waters along with neutral creams and soft pinks of dusky open skies. Forms have curved bases to sit well in the hand, or strong conical shapes as a canvas to decoration.

Helen Rossetti is a ceramic sculptor inspired by mythology, fables and literature. She explores the boundaries between imagination and reality.
Her studio, filled with clay figures, echoes the spirits of mythological beasts and fabled heroes. Inspired by Norse legends, Greek epics, and obscure folktales, she shapes each piece for the story she is telling. Serpents coil around demigods, ravens perch in hybrid forms, symbols pulled from centuries of human imagination. Every mark in the clay feels intentional, enhanced with a variety of oxide washes and underglazes. Helen preserves myth in earthen memory, making fables tactile, turning stories into timeless relics.

I make mostly functional stoneware; bowls, jugs, mugs and large coil built vessels, lamps and so on.

I came to pottery after a life changing spinal cord injury. I found that clay gave me the finger exercise that I need, and still do.
Since then 2012 I have been making and last year took part in the Great Pottery Throw Down.

Katy Jane Philpot is a ceramic artist influenced by the natural and diverse landscapes she has explored throughout her travels in Canada, the USA and Scotland. She has recently returned to her origins in Yorkshire, where she continues her creative practice in relation to location, memory and nature. It is the subtle details within nature that inspires her creative process—exploring unique textures, shapes and colours which are translated into repetitive patterns that reflect the rhythm and structure of the natural environment. Using monoprint and stencil techniques, Katy applies naturalistic imagery, pattern and texture onto slab-built and hand-thrown ceramic forms.

Laura works with textured porcelain, repurposing her family’s lace and crochet, to imprint her forms with memories celebrating the northern landscape alongside her family history.
Layering organic materials and combining glazes, she creates unique sculptural vessels, wall hangings, jewellery and Christmas decorations.
Laura’s work has been selected by interior designers, and is represented in many galleries, and private collections.

Nicola’s work is an exploration of layers capturing light, textures and muted colours inspired by the atmospheric elements of nature and landscapes, evoking an emotional connection of well-being and relaxation to each piece and encouraging you to be present in nature.

Dynamic surfaces are generated by layering diverse colours over relief detail and glaze textures, frequently finishing her handbuilt porcelain work with torn edges, and concluding with platinum lustre drips.

The work I make now is definitely and defiantly “decorative”!
I no longer think of “decorative” as a derogatory term as i would have done when I first started making ceramics many years ago.
I think what I have come to realise with age, (or “experience” as I prefer to call it), is that I no longer worry about my work being “meaningful” to others.
I don’t mean that in an arrogant sense, but rather that I can enjoy letting go of that aspect and make work without that hindrance.
I can make what I enjoy and hope that someone else will enjoy it too.

Zivarna hand forms textured vessels inspired by the cliffs and beaches along the rugged eroding East Yorkshire coastline where she lives. She impresses found beach treasures such as rocks, fossils and shells to texture her vessels and wearable offcuts (jewellery & brooches). Zivarna also uses wild clay found and reclaimed from her favourite beach in some of her pieces. Her work is thus imbued with a strong sense of place and connection to the natural organic landscapes surrounding her and are rooted in the erosion and loss of this landscape.

As a boy I was fascinated by the medieval world, still am; the world of knights, castles, folklore and…. pottery.

This led me to scouring local museums whenever on holiday, discovering the wonders of harvest jugs, aquamaniles and costrels, and from that…. Thomas Toft. This opened up the whole wondrous world of post medieval slipware, its continuation in the country potteries and its revival in the early 20th century by Leach and Cardew.

When I had the opportunity to try potting for myself, at local authority evening class, this was what I aspired to.

I have now been making pots for 45 years on and off, mainly off, throughout my working life.

A move to the Yorkshire Dales has given me the time and space I needed to pursue this continuing obsession

Katherine is a full time designer maker specialising
in ceramics and jewellery, she has been self
employed as a maker for ten years. Her studio is
based at the iconic Manchester Craft and Design
Centre in the heart of Manchesters Northern
Quarter. In her studio Katherine makes decorative
screen printed ceramics including, vases, planters,
jewellery dishes and tiles, all beautifully decorated
by hand. She also designs and makes sterling
silver and porcelain jewellery, inspired by victorian
curiosity cabinet objects. Her aim is to craft unique
handmade pieces to treasure.

Inga is drawn to the tactile and sculptural potential of clay, embracing the beauty that arises through the imperfections of making by hand. Her practice celebrates the organic, the irregular, and the sensual.
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Since childhood, Inga has been a collector of treasures—seed pods, pebbles, weathered fragments, and other found objects. These items, worn by time and shaped by nature, continue to inform and inspire her creative process. She draws particular fascination from the rhythmic imprints of the sea, layered textures, the smoothness of worn stones, delicate, broken edges, and the unfurling of ferns. Faceted seed pods and other botanical forms echo through her work, translated into clay through a personal, intuitive vocabulary.

Mel Fowell is a potter with over thirty years of making and teaching experience, exhibiting widely throughout the midland area and beyond. From an early interest in modern Raku Mel has built and developed a range of kilns and firing techniques to explore the potential of low fired re- duction atmospheres and their effect on numerous clay body and glaze combinations.
Experimentation and investigation remain key drivers in my work, with individual pieces often being subjected to several firing processes. All work is hand built and fired to earthenware temperatures or less. Like well worn beach pebbles, sagger fired pots are given a highly tactile burnished surface to encourage handling and act as a canvas for markings from the kiln. Other work incorporates bold contrast through the use of coloured slips, matt and Raku glazes, creating surfaces suggestive of richly lichened rocks and strata.