Ceramic Art London

After stumbling on this event last year and enjoying the demonstrations so much, I was determined to go to as many as possible this year, so arrived in time to see how Elke Sada makes her colourful slipware "beakers on plinths". She paints with highly-coloured slip onto plaster, makes a clay wall around it, and pours in casting slip. When it's dry, she cuts off the edges and cuts the slab into rectangles for the vessel, bottom, and base; she uses a transparent glaze. A fair bit of fettling [cleaning up] is involved ...
The next talk was was by Natasha Daintry, who started out learning Japanese and got interested in Japanese ceramics, then went on to make white and celadon pieces, until colour grabbed and held her. She related the qualities of the elements - fire, air, water, earth - to the qualities and attributes of colours. Interesting to me, but much too theoretical for the ladies sitting behind me.

The book stall was conveniently located outside the lecture theatre. I looked at just about every one and made a wish list of a couple of dozen of the tastiest, none of them costing under a tenner -Nearby was a CraftCube - showing the mobius-based work of Merete Rasmussen -
A quick bite in the caf, and it was time for another demo, Robert Cooper's working process - and process it is; he likes to see what's happening to the clay and react to that, rather than starting out making something specific.
Which left a bit of time to see the exhibits, resist the temptation to buy "a nice pot", and head home. The venue was the Royal College of Art, seen fuzzily here behind the Albert Hall -
In the basement was an intriguing small exhibition by the RCA ceramics&glass MA students. A first-year project is to make a replica of an object in the V&A, and then "evolve" it. Melissa Gamwell turned a "mennecy jar" (for cosmetics in 1755) inside out - see how she did it here.