Makers at the Workhouse Gallery
First in a series of blogs about the makers who inspire us. Here at the Workhouse Gallery we work with craft makers and showcase and sell their work. We choose thoughtful, sustainable and beautiful pieces which are expressed through dedication to method, materials and design.
James Burnett-Stuart is a local potter who produces seemingly simple rustic pottery but which is, at the same time, sophisticated and beautiful.
James trained at Harrow College from 1986-8, having originally done a degree in English Literature at Cambridge University. He made ranges of tableware for shops and galleries including The Conran Shop, Designer’s Guild and Egg. His work from this period was frequently featured in magazines such as World of Interiors, Elle Decoration and Country Living. James has held solo shows of more individual pieces at The Scottish Gallery (Edinburgh), Egg (London) and Charleston Farmhouse (East Sussex). James was also Artist in Residence at Charleston. From 1999 James took a ten year break from pottery and concentrated on other things including drawing and painting. He started making pots again in his beautiful workshop at Lower Way Farm near Kington in 2009.
"I like the way pots enter our lives stealthily, benignly, and exert their quiet influence. As companions, offering beauty, comfort, practical service, sensuous experience all in a modest almost subliminal way. This is the beauty of pottery - that it lives side by side with us not calling for attention, and not provoking self-consciousness. But allowing, as it were, by slow release, discoveries of depth and detail" - James Burnett-Stuart.
"All my pots are, as always, made from red earthenware clay which is slipped with a lighter coloured clay, and glazed, possibly with a second layer. Many pots are thrown and often altered immediately – for example scalloped or fluted. Increasingly I like making pots free-hand or with simple wooden moulds. This enables one to make pots that aren’t round."
"I hope have taken some influence from local hedgerows and weather, as well as certain types of Japanese and European pottery. They are of a scale – my preferred scale – that invites being picked up, felt and used" - James Burnett-Stuart.
James' work is available to buy from us at the Workhouse Gallery. Please email us if you are interested in a particular piece.