Kate’s raku and stoneware ceramics are made in a personal pursuit of peace and tranquillity and are an attempt to make a connection with a more natural past. Her signature bound containers, with their permanently secured lids, capture time and suspend us in a sense of on-going mystery. Lifting a box lid to find a contrasting interior is like the surprise of opening a gift or rediscovering a distant memory.

Grouped together, the pieces become like carefully placed fragments of a landscape. Abstracted elements of water, horizons or rock echo the smoke and flames of raku. Layers of subtle stoneware glazes wrap each pot and distant horizons are reflected in their surfaces.

Raku firing gives an infinite variation to the pot’s surface that makes each piece individual. The glazed pieces are rapidly fired outdoors in a gas kiln and quickly removed once they reach 1000 degrees centigrade. They are then quickly covered with wood shavings which burn into the clay, smoking the unglazed surfaces and giving a unique crackle to the pieces. Out of this intense activity come pieces that have been described by collectors as “meditations in clay”.

Kate first set up her studio in Cockpit Arts, London in 1996 and since 2005 has worked from a studio at her home in West Kent. She has exhibited internationally since she graduated in 1996, with a major show at Blackwell, Cumbria. Kate is a Professional Member of the Craft Potters Association, and her work has been purchased for private and public collections, including British Airways, The British Embassy in St Petersburg and The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

In 2013, she was commissioned by the Director of The Ibaraki Museum in Japan to make 3 major installations of over 150 pieces for the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in Korea. In 2026 Kate celebrates three decades of running her full-time ceramic studio and a life centred around a love of all things ceramic!