Our team
Zoe Lloyd Director of Ceramics Classes London
MA Ceramics & Glass, Royal College of Art, PGCE Institute of education, BA hons Ceramics, Staffordshire University.
British Ceramics Biennial 2017 Award, Taste Contemporary Miart, Milan, Taste Contemporary 2022 Art Genève, Switzerland.
I make a mixture of functional and sculptural forms that are related to the body. I work with clay blended with my own and others failures made upon the pottery wheel. Once Leather hard I construct a bone like frame to support a soft withered skin, this is how I start to make my sculptures.
The abstract forms are imaginative externalisations of the human interior, sometimes suggestive of endoscopic lifeforms transmogrified into three dimensions, deconstructed and amalgamated, formed from dreams and visions of things not yet known.
www.zoelloyd.com
Henry Shepherd
London based potter, potting since 1972 - I’m a retired architect and enjoy experimenting with form and constructing shapes on the pottery wheel.
For thirty five years I practiced as an architect on commercial, residential and bespoke projects. I have improved as a result of twenty years of evening classes at Nicola Tassie’s studio in Hoxton, making bigger vessels or complex forms by joining thrown elements. I joined Studio Pottery London for two years and became a member at Turning Earth in Highgate. I was drawn into making kiln fodder for the firings of the reconstructed Roman kiln in Highgate Woods
I’ve attended throwing masterclasses with Eric Landon (aka Tortus) held at SPL and started to teach at Columbia Road Clay in Hackney before joining Ceramics Classes London.
I am learning something new all the time and being challenged. At CCL I am pleased to offer something back to the warm and generous world of potters
Mercedes Jaskolka
In her classes, Mercedes encourages students to embrace play and find joy in working with clay. She also aims to cultivate mindfulness through the act of creating, inviting her students to experience pottery as a meditative practice. By sharing her own journey, she demonstrates that anyone can learn and master a new skill at any stage of life.
Her ongoing projects and research explore the mindful and ancestral connections between yoga and pottery. Mercedes is passionate about decolonising ceramics and breaking down barriers to access in both the arts and wellness spaces, so that people from all backgrounds can experience the joy of working with clay.
Catrin Howell
Catrin holds a Masters in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art and a BA (Hons) in Three Dimensional Design: Ceramics from the University of Wolverhampton. Some of her solo shows include The Scottish Gallery Edinburgh (Scotland), Galerie Terra Delft (Netherlands), Ruthin Craft Centre (Wales), among others. Catrin has been awarded the Creative Wales Award, the National Eisteddfod of Wales, the Crafts Council Setting Up Grant, and the Fletcher Challenge Ceramic Award.
Jasmine Samuels
Jasmine is a London-based ceramic artist whose journey with clay began in 2016, evolving in a practice centred on wheel-thrown and intricately hand carved porcelain. Her work centres on clean, balanced forms and quiet surface details, exploring the softness and precision that porcelain allows. She is drawn to the material’s subtlety and challenges, embracing its unpredictability as part of the creative process. Her pieces often reflect a calm, minimal aesthetic, shaped by careful carving and an interest in refined, functional design.
Alongside her studio practice, she teaches wheel-throwing with a relaxed, supportive approach, encouraging students to enjoy the process and appreciate the playful, imperfect nature of clay.
Sammy Dowson
Sammy trained as a theatre designer at The Slade school of Fine Art.
With 30 years of experience and over 100 set and costume designs she was looking for a new challenge and a more individual form off expression in the ceramics studio.
Sammy has been making her own ceramic work for three years, including thrown, constructed and sculpted work. Coming from a design background she enjoys the challenge of working to a design but then loves to allow the clay to take it’s own form. She is particularly working towards attractive and meaningful patterned and sculptural surface texture inspired by natural and figurative forms.
For the last 5 years Sammy has been a visiting Lecturer at The Central School for Speech and Drama working with the theatre crafts students.
In the Ceramics studio she is a patient and attentive teacher with a lighthearted approach and a deep love of the craft of ceramics.