Click on the names above for links to view maker’s profiles and social media

OUR COMMUNITY

  • Abigail Schama (Co-founder) Having trained as a painter, Abigail has long treated the surface of clay as a surface for making marks and cultivating textures. But where paintings are viewed from a fixed distance, a pot elicits the elemental wish to touch and handle it. While painters from Rembrandt to Twombly have been formative forces in the look of her work, she also seeks to explore the relationship of beauty to function, a concern transmitted to Abigail by great ceramicists such as Lucy Rie and Peter Voulkos, and most directly by her teacher Akiko Hirai. Abigail is a patron of Camden Psychotherapy unit, the charity supported by the studio.

    Abigail co-founded the Mews Coachworks in 2018, a maker’s community of women where she also teaches

  • Sarah Drinkwater (Co-founder) is a creative seamstress.  She has a background in fashion buying, and trend forecasting.  Sarah is inspired by Sonia Delaunay and explores her love of colour and pattern through textiles. She sources vintage garments, and ethnic textiles, reworking them into contemporary pieces for fashion and home. Sarah is a trustee of Camden Psychotherapy unit, the studio’s charity.

  • Heidi Bishop Heidi Bishop started her career as a fashion model, then attended what is now Morley College for ceramics. She is now working as a full-time ceramicist. Her delicate porcelain work is inspired by the intricacies of nature.

  • Laura McCartney is a potter,. she grew up in the North East of England. In 2018 I spent 3 months working in Mashiko, Japan. Both places have influenced her work a great deal. Much of her work is about damage and what it means to be damaged. She is also interested in collaboration and giving over part of the making process to the materials.

  • Nicole Douglas-Morris is a British-Venezuelan potter, working mainly through hand-building. Her  designs reference pre-Colombian utilitarian forms and and take inspiration from 20th century biomorphic artists such as Jean Arp.

  • Margie Orford is a writer, journalist and author of crime fiction. She is currently a fellow of the Institute for Advanced studies in the Humanities at Edinburgh University

  • Claire Palmer Clare is a ceramic artist making abstract, conceptual sculptures. She crafts her one-off sculptures and vessels in stoneware and porcelain clays, using both throwing and handbuilding techniques. Oxides, engobes and glaze create subtle variations of colour and tone to reflect the narratives explored through the work.

    Her work has been shown at a number of galleries and exhibitions, including Collect.

    Ceramics is her second career: in a previous life she worked as an advertising strategist.

  • Alvaro Picardo creates hand-painted lampshades that are fully bespoke and designed to enhance both traditional and modern interiors. Constantly inspired by his Catalan and Spanish roots, together with his love of modern art and brutalist architecture, Alvaro started painting lampshades with the aim of giving new life to otherwise forgotten objects, creating bespoke interior-design pieces. Through daring, colourful and hand-painted lampshades he aims to provide a distinctive feeling to any space or room, enhancing its atmosphere by adding an individual work. Each lampshade is unique: a tribute to the spirit of craftsmanship, which lies behind its particular finish, with traces of the artist’s personal handiwork visible in the finished product.

    Alvaro’s work is featured in World of Interiors, House&Garden, Elle Deco.. as he is constantly working with London’s leading interior design studios like Sybil Colefax, Jonathan Reed,  Buchanan Studio, Max Rollit or Douglas Mackie, to name just a few.

    His most recent project is a collection of hand-painted lampshades for iconic Swedish shop Svenskt Tenn

  • Ylana Roback started life as a potter two years ago.

    Her hand made ceramics are fully functional yet decorative, glazed in a quiet palette of blues and greens with occasional glints of real gold. Generous bowls and serving plates to grace a table and vases for bunches or single stems. 

    Although each piece is unique, they work wonderfully as clusters or nests.

  • Poppy Sebag-Montifiore is a writer and broadcast journalist. She has worked as a reporter from Beijing for Channel4 News and as an investigative filmmaker for Newsnight. Her essay Touch for Granta 148: The Politics of Feeling won a Pushcart Prize 2021, and has been translated into Chinese for the Beijing based literary magazine Dan Du. She is currently at work on a novel.

  • Charlotte Speechley is a photographer who works in portraiture, covering authors for cover shots and creating images for a band’s album. Charlotte  works with members of the studio, creating still life shots of member’s work and also collaborating on the film The Wrangle. She also works in the music industry at The Rhythm Studio college. 

  • Liz Unna is an award-winning commercials and documentary director.

    She directs commercials and short films for numerous clients in Europe and the US, with a focus on work that honour’s women and their stories. Whether the topic is war reportage or self-care, she elicits emotive and authentic performances from her subjects, and always seeks to find the point where heightened cinematography meets truth… Liz is represented by Independent Films in London and Girl Culture in LA.