Fresh Visions

After a busy season of exhibitions and fairs, the Joanna Bird Gallery is opening for visitors again. With lots of new installations, it gives us great pleasure to invite you to look at a selection of the outstanding new work that can now be viewed at the Chiswick gallery.

As the days grow longer and the garden comes to life, there’s no better time to visit the house and garden. The space, thoughtfully curated by Joanna, offers a serene and intimate setting where you can engage with the new works on display. The domestic setting provides a great opportunity to draw inspiration and imagine the pieces in your own home. Outside, the garden is in full bloom with vibrant tulips, hyacinths, and other spring flowers, creating a stunning backdrop to the artworks.

For more information about any of the works on show, please email us at info@joannabird.com or call us on (+44) 02089959960.

For those unable to come and experience the works firsthand, please enjoy this short video of the exhibition.

Artists Listed in Alphabetical Order

Emmanuel Boos discovered his craft as an adolescent and later began working in a pottery studio while pursuing academic studies. He then travelled and lived in South Korea and China where he developed an interest in Chinese glazes and porcelain. During his subsequent apprenticeship with Jean Girel, he perfection his knowledge of both ceramic bodies and high-temperature glazes, prompting him to undertake a practice-led PhD at the Royal College of Art.

‘My practice of glaze does not aim mastery nor domination. I do not have those ambitions nor do I wish to turn into a jealous potter as described by Claude Lévi-Strauss. I wish to slip into the glaze and develop a friendly relationship with chaos and eventually trust chance.’

Emmanuel has exhibited internationally, including at Design Basel/Miami, PAD London, and at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. In 2011 he was a Jerwood Makers Open Laureate, and from 2016 to 2019 was artist in residence at the Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, Paris. Emmanuel was awarded Best Artist at COLLECT, 2023, and he received a special mention by the 2024 Loewe jury panel for his Coffee Table Comme un lego, 2023.

He lives and works between Paris and Mannheim.

Norah Braden is one of the foremost British potters of her time. After graduating with a diploma in painting at the Royal College of Art, she studied at the Leach Pottery from 1925 to 1928, where she became particularly interested in wood ash glazes. She subsequently worked alongside Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie at Coleshill for eight years, using ash glazes made from plants and wood on the estate.

She taught at Brighton and Central Schools of Art. Braden was a perfectionist, and destroyed many of the pots she made, to the extent that her work is now considered rare. She was thought by Leach to have the best eye of any of his pupils and is considered by many to have the greatest sensitivity to shape of any of the Leach pupils.

Adam Buick studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Wales before embarking on a Ceramics Design and Skills course in Ireland in 2004. He uses the Moon Jar form as a canvas to map observations from an ongoing study of his surroundings, incorporating stone and locally dug clay into the work to create a narrative that conveys a unique sense of place. The use of local materials is integral to his work, reflecting a personal relationship with landscape, the materials within it and his past experiences from where materials were collected.

His work is in a number of public collections including the Devonshire Collection and the National Museum Cardiff.

Born in 1975 in Pakistan, brought up in Lancashire and now living in Shropshire, Halima’s varied, multi-cultural background is tangibly present in her work. A natural creativity presented itself at an early age and was nurtured to fruition as Halima carved her way through an art-based education: an undergraduate degree in 1997 and an MA in 2002.

The culmination of this process is Halima’s precociously mature work. Fusing her Asian roots with a fascination for Mughal and African pattern work and a passion for architectural geometry, Halima’s work is intense yet playful, structured yet creative; substantial yet dynamic and invariably compelling in its originality.

In Halima’s work she combines strong geometric elements with recurrent patterns and architectural principles, her work utilises definite lines and dramatic angles. Halima concentrates on simple forms as the basis of her work in order to maximise the impact of the complex surface patterns in combination with heavily contrasting contours.

Amanda’s work is centred in nature, seasonal changes, decay and how time changes things. She observes how over time surface quality changes, objects split apart, flake off, develop mould – natural mark making and change through simple being.

Amanda started working with clay in 2006 and over the years has undertaken private tuition with a variety of experts through collaboration and study. Since 2017 she has made ceramics under the tutelage of Hilary La Force and has also attended City of Oxford College, developing throwing techniques, learning mold making and glaze mixing skills. Her work involves hand building, throwing and slip casting, often using textiles, and she mixes her own glazes.

Amanda has exhibited at Daylesford and in Mayfair, and her work has been acquired by galleries in Paris and Houston.

Natasha Daintry studied Japanese at Cambridge and Ceramics at both the Surrey Institute of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art. Since 1995 Natasha has run her own company designing for industry as well as creating her own ceramic works of art.

Natasha uses a high-white porcelain as a luminous ground for exploring colour and exploits the clay’s natural muscularity and delicacy to explore scale through making massive and tiny vessels. Inspired by her experience working with the ceramics industry in Stoke-on-Trent Natasha employs the potter’s repertoire of repetition and multiplicity to investigate movement through fields of coloured pots.

Natasha has won numerous awards and has exhibited widely in the UK including COLLECT and the York Museums Trust collection.

Steffen originally trained as a toolmaker, and worked for some years as such, before realising his curiosity spanned more than that which is measurable. In glass he found these qualities. The uncompromising nature of this material exactly fitted the precise and analytic way of thinking that he was taught in constructing industrial tools.

During his first ten years of glass making, Steffen was practising and experimenting with all the different techniques to become a good craftsman. While doing so, he discovered a new kind of beauty in the fringes of the well-crafted glass he was making. In the area of mistakes and faults – the unwanted air bubbles, ash marks, soot, cracks and crookedness – he found something that could not be predicted or sketched beforehand. He set the established and traditional techniques aside and started making glass all “wrong” in an attempt to capture the good in the bad. Out of these experiments came the “Fossils”, “Plants” and other objects – like frozen extracts of chaos to be watched undisturbed.

Steffen has work in Museums and private collections internationally.

Sara was first drawn to porcelain in 2013 when completing her degree at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Seeing beauty in the fragility and delicacy of the material whilst utilising its strength Sara has used both the elements when developing her signature style.

Using slip she paints to create her wafer thin pieces of ceramic. Then using repetition she creates pieces constructed of these individual units that build up to form sculptures and wall based installations. Eliciting curiosity her work uses general notions of what ceramics is and its possibilities. Sara captures wonder and amazement for the viewer.

Sara describes her mentality while working as a meditative state, allowing her hands to work intuitively.

For Sara the firing itself is an important tool within her process. Porcelain is a high firing material and will reach a temperature of 1260 degrees celsius within the kiln. These high temperatures cause the porcelain to begin to move and shift. Sara then uses this movement to manipulate her designs and add a finishing touch to her free standing pieces. These unique sculptures capture a moment in time from the firing, immortalising the piece. Sara uses this balance of design and chance to capture freedom and individuality in her sculptures.

Her work has been shown internationally including the New York Ceramics and Glass Fair and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Sara frequently exhibits in London having shown at Collect, held at the Saatchi Gallery in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and at the London Art Fair in 2019.

Katya’s formal art education involved full-time study as a sculptor, mould-maker and ceramicist. She studied for 2 years at the Tel-Aviv Art Centre and for 4 years for a BFA at Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem. After graduating, in 2002, she was offered a job in a glass studio in Israel: a non-profit organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of youth at risk, selling glass products made in the factory throughout Israel and the USA.

Here Katya was responsible for the development and design of functional glass products, overseeing the production process, programming kilns and advising on all stages of production – here her love of glass became fully established. She was then offered the freedom to explore glass as a creative medium.
In 2006 she took classes in Pilchuck glass school in the USA and the Glass Furnace in Turkey. In September 2008 she was invited to participate in Pilchuck’s EAiR – 2 month residency and later was invited by Noth Lands Creative Glass to take a combined residency with the Scottish Sculpture Workshop.

In 2009 Katya moved from Israel to the UK to take an MA at the University of Sunderland which she accomplished with Distinction. In 2010 her project ‘Pain Killers’ was purchased for the Tyne & Wear Museums Contemporary Glass Collection. She was awarded a grant by the Stanley Picker Trust and a representation in their London Collection.

Her studio was based at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland, UK where she produced her sculpture and undertook bespoke casting commissions. These include 15 Stag Head casts for William Grant, Glenfiddich Whisky for international airports and sculptures for the Royal Victoria Infirmary hospital in Newcastle Upon Tyne and AkzoNobel.

In 2018 Katya moved back to Israel and established a studio in Tel-Aviv.

“My work focuses its attention on sculptural concerns and material qualities. I am interested in form and surface, light and space. I have learnt traditional skills and techniques to explore the potential of ceramic materials. Clay in its sedimentary form is inert and yet, somehow living. I am interested in discovering and revealing properties it has to experience the joy of creating. Play informs my work and is indeed the central pillar to all that I do. My children help me to keep an eye open to this idea and their imaginative play always inspires me.

Clay is like a mirror, it reflects all that is done to it and provides a visual record of process, if one is bold it shows clearly, mistakes cannot be concealed. Therefore skill is essential and has to be acquired through trial and error and then practice. I am very interested in the unity of an object. In the case of a pot this means that the form, the surface, the inside, the rim and the case all have to work together and meant the same thing to one another for the object to be considered a success.”

Elizabeth Fritsch trained as a musician before taking up pottery in 1966. She studied ceramics at the Royal College of Art under Hans Coper. After leaving in 1971, she worked in the Bing and Grondahl factory in Copenhagen where she held her first exhibition. She was a major prize winner in the Royal Copenhagen Jubilee Competition. In 1987, she set up her own studio in London and in that year, was chosen for the Bernard Leach Centenary Post Office Stamp issue with Hans Coper and Lucie Rie.

Her work can be seen in many public collections, including the Belle Rive Museum, Zurich, the Musée Des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, the Shigaraki Museum, Japan, and at the V&A. Joanna Bird curated a solo show for Elizabeth at The Fine Art Society in 2008.

Joseph Harrington is a sculptor working predominantly in cast glass. He graduated with an MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art in 2006. He recently won ‘Best in Show’ at the 2017 British Glass Biennale, a gold medal at the Bavarian State Prize 2018 and has recently had his work acquired by the V&A Museum, London.

Joseph has exhibited both nationally and internationally including a 2013 solo exhibition ‘Landscape Portraits’ at Bullseye gallery, Portland USA and has exhibited at ‘Collect’ art fair at the Saatchi Gallery, London. ‘I interpret landscapes through exploration of material. I focus on rugged coastlines, looking at erosion as a spectacle of discovery and generation of form, revealing a sense of the history and movement of a place.

The work is produced using my ‘Lost Ice Process’: I use salt to sculpt ice as a one-off ephemeral model to take a direct cast from. The textures this provides and the transient nature of the creative process reflects the erosion and sense of time I want to represent in the landscape. There is a roughness from the initial cast that is ground polished and refined to its final finish, revealing the internal structures of the glass and creating facets and flat planes to redefine the essence of the made against the organic surface.’

Pierre Jeanneret was a Swiss architect who collaborated with his cousin, Charles Edouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier).

In 1922, the Jeanneret cousins set up an architectural practice together. They designed many buildings, including a number of villas and holiday homes.

As well as buildings, Pierre also designed furniture, both independently and with his cousin, Le Corbusier.

In the early 1950s Pierre Jeanneret began a new project at Chandigarh, in India, at the invitation of his cousin Le Corbusier. Pierre was responsible for a significant amount of designing for the Panjab University, including the Gandhi Bhawan and the University Library. After the project finished, Pierre Jeanneret stayed on as Chief Architect of the city for over a decade.

Chris began his career as an actor before being apprentice to Edmund de Waal in 1995 and has worked from his own London studio since 1998. His work – in the form finely potted Limoges porcelain beakers, bowls, bottles and lidded jars – is often glazed using deceptively simple combinations of tenmoku and deep celadon, before being reduction fired in a gas kiln.

Examples of his work can be seen in The Contemporary Art Society, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the MIMA. Joanna Bird has represented Chris since 2000 at shows in London and in SOFA Chicago. He has also exhibited at the British Embassy in St Petersburg, Yufuku Gallery, Tokyo and has been included in the British Council Tours of Scandinavia and Australia.

Hyejeong Kim creates contemporary ceramic art that is both functional and sculptural. Her forms are created in perfect symmetry on the wheel, and then deformed later in her hands. Hyejeong has developed techniques and glazes that are originally derived from Chinese, Korean and Japanese traditional pottery.

Since graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan, Hyejeong has been exhibiting her work internationally and is currently based in Seoul, Korea.

‘I make pots on a wheel and am deeply fascinated by the dynamism of the movement between the centrifugal and centripetal forces that create a form. There are many different ways to make pots but throwing clay on a wheel yields the most organic shapes, like flowers blossoming or fruit maturing’.

William Marshall was the first of the true apprentices, as opposed to students, taken on at the Leach Pottery. A local St Ives boy, he came straight from school and was trained to be a thrower for the new range of standard ware being developed. Conscripted in 1942 he returned to the Pottery in 1947, becoming the foreman. Though he had originally worked with David Leach, he now became Bernard Leach’s right hand man. He was at this time responsible for throwing to designs done on paper, Bernard’s larger vases, leaving the master to detail the foot and rim, decorate and complete.

In 1977 he left the Leach Pottery to set up his own studio at Lelant, Cornwall. His own individual work then developed strongly. Obviously Marshall had worked with Bernard Leach for many years and his influence is apparent but one can also recognise the debt he owes to Shoji Hamada. He drew further inspiration from his love of nature and, in particular, the Cornish landscape. His colours and glazes reflect his observations of lichen on rocks and seasonal changes of plant life on the Penwith Moors.

Nest create beautiful hand crafted furniture made from solid timber. Their signature pieces are known for the clarity of their lines and seamless profiles. The work is distinctive in its use of polished lacquer in bright intense colours.

Their Phoenix series creates an unusual juxtaposition of reconstituted charred timber (made using the Japanese charring technique shou-sugi-ban) and vibrant lacquer surfaces.

In 2005 they received the Irish Furniture Design Award presented by John Makepeace. Nest’s furniture is in private collections and Museums internationally.

Every piece is one of a limited edition.

Born in 1959 and following his ceramic design studies at Chelsea College of Art, William Plumptre travelled to Japan and continued his learning with various potters in Japan, most importantly the Japanese National Treasure, Tatsuzo Shimaoka. He returned to England and established his first pottery in 1987. Since 1994, Plumptre has been working from his studio housed in a seventeenth century farmhouse in the Lake District.

Plumptre’s pieces are thrown or press moulded and he often uses rope to create textures in the stoneware clay body, which he then inlays with coloured slip. His glazes are primarily made from local materials including wood ash and granite, and then reduction fired. The strength and beauty of his work lies in the balance of form and colour influenced by the Japanese aesthetic. Instilled in each piece is the dedication of Plumptre’s practice in which he scrupulously oversees every aspect himself.

Born in Vienna, Lucie Rie (née Gomperz) studied ceramics at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule under Michael Powolny and Robert Obseiger from 1921 to 1926. She showed her work in various exhibitions concerned with the products of the Wiener Secession, including the Paris exhibitions of 1925 and 1936. She arrived in England in 1938 and established her studio in Albion Mews, West London, where she remained for the rest of her working life.

Her earliest English works were ceramic buttons, brooches and tableware, which she made with the assistance of Hans Coper after the Second World War. However, once wartime exigencies and immediate post-war austerities were over, Rie was free to develop her work, bringing to it an infallible sense of style combined with a certain ‘English’ sense of balance between form and surface.

Even after Hans Coper left to set up his own studio in 1958, they continued to exhibit together and their work, although very different, represented a new departure from the Eastern influences that until then had been the British studio potter’s sole source of reference. Lucie Rie’s work is to be found in numerous major public collections, as well as many private ones.

Working by the sea in Hastings, artist and potter Judith Rowe makes a wide range of earthenware. She uses traditional techniques which she learned under Eddie Hopkins in the renowned Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire.

Judith has established nature as the central motif which permeates her work both metaphorically and literally, since she decorates her cups, jugs and bowls with birds and plants and regularly throws pots with clay that she collects from the shore’s surface at low-tide. Loving nothing more than to be on the beach or in the fields, she decorates her earthenware using oxides and paints that mirror the greens, greys and blues of the sea and surrounding landscape. Judith has cited Minoan terracotta pottery as her biggest inspiration.

Laura de Santillana (1955–2019) was born in Venice and trained in New York, where she also worked at the Vignelli studio. From 1975 to 1985, she designed objects and lamps for Venini, the renowned glass company founded by her grandfather, Paolo Venini. Many of her designs from this period are now part of prestigious collections worldwide.

She was an internationally renowned glass artist who continually pushed the boundaries of her medium. Initially expected to lead Venini, her path took a new direction when the company was taken over in 1985. This unexpected turn freed her from familial obligations, allowing her to pursue her own artistic vision while remaining deeply connected to the Murano glassmaking tradition and heritage.

The first step was always imagined in sketches, which gave rise to the bridging power in Laura’s glass which depended on the sensuality of her artistic vision; she saw within glass beauty and tenderness such as no other artist has brought to life with such vivid effect.

After Laura’s passing in 2019, the De Santillana Foundation was established to preserve and promote her artistic legacy.

Rupert Spira was born in London in 1960. He gained a degree at West Surrey College of Art and Design from 1978 – 80 under Henry Hammond and later trained with Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge Pottery. In 1996 he set up his own studio at Church Farm, Shropshire.

The skill of throwing on a potter’s wheel is the basis of Rupert Spira’s work. Having been the apprentice to some major ceramic artists he sets very high standards in the craft of his art – making things larger and with extraordinary attention to detail than one might anticipate.

The versatility of his skills mean that works vary in scale from miniature to monumental and in decoration from monochrome to intricately hand-written texts. Rupert also painstakingly applies raised texts to some pieces, and in some cases poetry he has written himself.

Kaja Upelj is a Slovenian artist working between Slovenia and the United Kingdom. She graduated from the Royal College of Art (2018) specializing in glass, prior which she received BA in Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (2016). During her MA, Upelj developed a technique in which iridescent colours occur from chemical reactions within glass.

Kaja has won numerous scholarships and awards, including being named a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust Scholar in the UK and one of the global emerging young talents at New Horizons 2018 in China. She has exhibited internationally, showing in art fairs such as Collect in London, Miart and Milan Design Week in Milan, as well as in Nomad Circle situated in various cities.

Photography credits: David Barreiro.

Born in 1938 London, John Ward is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest potters. Influenced by ancient pre-glaze pottery from China and Cypress he was inspired by more modern influences such as Hans Coper’s formal strength, Lucie Rie’s colour palette and Ian Godfrey’s playful textures.

In 1966 Ward was accepted onto the Camberwell School of Art and Crafts Ceramics course after developing a fascination with pottery during Adult Education classes. After graduating he worked as a part time pottery teacher in London while also developing his studio. In 1979 he moved to Pembrokeshire where he still resides and works.

‘There is something compelling about the making of pots, regardless of function, which keeps me within the particular sphere; they are the focus of some many interests and associations. My aim is to make pots which have simple forms with integral decoration and aspects which can interact with the environment in interesting ways; to try and express a balance between these dynamic qualities and a sense of stillness or containment. Form above all, but expressed through light and colour’ – John Ward

Matthew Warner completed his BA at Camberwell College of Art in 2010. He went on to study under Julian Stair and now works from his studio in South East London. Matthew is inspired by the work of the 18th century potter, Josiah Wedgwood.

‘Pots fascinate me because they embody and articulate so much information about society and culture. They are relics or signals of taste, social behaviour and cultural history. Their forms are incredibly diverse and at the same time carry a universal understanding. These everyday objects span social divides and convey very concentrated messages about their environment. I am particularly interested in the social connotations of these objects throughout history and more specifically how they have been deployed to promote ideas of class, power, and even moral understanding. My new work explores these perceptions of status and how they are influenced by functionality, social environment, material and ideas of luxury.’

Gregory Warren Wilson’s brilliantly colourful and innovative work in glass plays with the translucent nature of the material. Each piece is conceived on multiple layers – sometimes as many as six – and these layers allow light to interact with the glass spatially, penetrating the depths within each frame. The designs he makes sparkle and scintillate, and they appear to move as you look at them.

Warren Wilson’s work is, in part, sculptural. Each piece can only exist in three dimensions, and the glass interacts with the play of light spatially. His work invites the eye to exult in pure colour, and also to investigate the mysterious depths of the space that the designs inhabit within their bespoke frames.

Having lived for many years in Italy and Australia, light is crucial to his work as an artist. The tesserae he uses are hand-cut in Murano, and the irregularity of each unique piece enlivens the surface of his work, refracting light in ways that are eye-catching and unpredictable. Each of his designs is made with great precision so that the individual tesserae reflect and refract light in an extraordinary variety of ways.

Warren Wilson is a prize-winning poet. He has published five collections and was awarded an Arts Council Grant in 2008. A number of his glass designs take as their starting point a fragment of poetry. Over time, his visual response develops into a ‘correlative’, resulting in a glasswork that exists in its own right, while alluding, albeit obliquely, to the original literary source.