Ceramics: Fritsch, Cooper, Foakes, Perry & Sada

Recently I've been getting into ceramics. My interest was initially sparked when I saw Elizabeth Fritsch's stuff at the Wales National Museum in Cardiff - pieces that are heavily influenced by art, architecture and (apparently) music.

At Cardiff they also have a significant permanent collection, including some more popular stuff, such as work by Susie Cooper.

A year or so later I was really impressed by the clever re-invention of ‘canoptic’ pots in acrylic and ceramic by Lucy Jane Foakes at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen at Bovey Tracey.

I wasn't too familiar with Grayson Perry's work until last year, when I went to his curated exhibition at the British Museum (meant to blog about it at the time but after visiting 7 London exhibitions in 3 days it all proved too much ...).

Anyway, the exhibition was excellent and, apart from Perry's work, included ceramics and artefacts from many other cultures. I would particularly recommend the reasonably-priced catalogue that accompanied the exhibition (compare the price of this with that of Hockney and other catalogues).

More recently, I visited the Bernard Leach pottery in St Ives. I'd previously avoided this because Leach ceramics appeared a bit too traditional for my taste. However, I'm glad to say that the visit was definitely worth it and it opened my eyes to the whole 'making' process involved in the manufacture of ceramics (I have a set of photos that I also intend to post sometime).

In the Leach shop they had some fantastic modern pieces by Elke Sada.

So now I'm hooked and I'm always on the lookout for stuff I can add to my small collection. Acquisitions have included a pot by Louis Hudson (£10) and this small East German pot by Strehla VEB (sold to me by an antiques dealer as Danish) for £9.

My most recent purchase was this Jessie Tait designed Midwinter Sienna pattern partial tea set (bought for £4 from a charity shop).

I'll be adding occasional postings about future finds from now on. Here finally, to be going on with, is a great Taj Mahal jampot which I picked up for £5 at an antiques fair (obviously it didn't appeal to anyone else as it was still sat on the stall at the end of the day - the earliest I usually manage to get along to these things).

If you have an interest in modern ceramics you may want to take a look at my Pinterest board.