Charlotte Jones
Charlotte Jones was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire in 1958 and grew up near Peterborough and then King’s Lynn. Charlotte lives and works in a renovated chapel high above Falmouth Bay in Cornwall with stunning views from Plymouth to the Lizard. She graduated in 2001 from Falmouth College of Art with a Studio Ceramics degree, the vestry becoming the ceramic workshop. Charlotte visits family in Norfolk several times a year and finds that “travelling by train through the different landscapes I have a sense of coming home seeing the fens, the colours and shapes in the sky and land evoke memories of my childhood.”
Land and seascapes inspire her work, observing her surroundings so design decisions become intuitive. Details in shells, pebbles and natural found objects are explored in minute detail by drawing and painting to inform the pots. Charlotte makes her distinctive pots by adding colour to white stoneware clay, local clays, grog from streams and oxides. The coloured clays are used as a three-dimensional collage material: layers contrast and merge. Pot bases are thrown, coils added and pinched and scraped into an organic vessel.
During firing the different clays can undulate, recalling strata and the uneven time wearing of rock faces. Burnished with a pebble when leather hard, the pots are then once high fired, returning them to a tactile stone surface. “I want to produce a tactile matt pebble surface, echoing the Cornish beach stones tumbled in the surf that you would want to hold in your hand and take home with you.”
Don’t hesitate to email us on info@cambridgegallery.co.uk or call us on 01223 324222 if you have any questions about specific pieces.
