Saturday 23 November 2024

11am – 4.30pm

Join us for this masterclass with potters Jonathan Chiswell Jones and Kerry Bosworth. Learn the specialist art of adding beautiful, iridescent effects of lustre to your own tile designs.

To inspire your designs, you will be shown examples made by the potters that show the possibilities of the lustre technique. The tiles will have received two firings prior.

You will begin by drawing design ideas on paper, selecting your favourites to create either one or two tiles. In the afternoon, under the tutors’ expert guidance you will be introduced to working with clay paste lustres. The tiles will be pre-made and already once bisque fired, allowing the time in the workshop to be spent concentrating on design and learning about the lustre glazing technique. You will be shown how to apply the clay paste lustre to the tiles using brushes, sponges or pens and all materials and tools will be provided. Your completed tiles will be left to dry and then fired by the artists in their lustre kiln. The tiles will then be returned to the Gallery for your collection.

You are welcome to bring along a sketchbook and drawing materials, otherwise paper and pencils will be available.

Whilst you visit there will be the opportunity to visit Jonathan Chiswell Jones’s exhibition in the Watts Contemporary Gallery and talk to the potters about the creation of the work.

About the artists

Jonathan Chiswell Jones has worked as a professional potter since 1974. Since the millennium he has focused on making lustreware using the Islamic tradition of clay paste lustre. Kerry Bosworth has worked with Jonathan for 27 years.

Jonathan Chiswell Jones works with Kerry Bosworth making and decorating fine pots by hand. As artisan potters, they accept commissions both for porcelain and for lustreware. Their aim is to produce work which is practical, beautiful, and unmistakably theirs.

Jonathan trained at Farnham Art School and then with Joe Finch in Scotland. The ideas which inspired him came from Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book, which he read as a schoolboy. After studying at Oxford and working as an English teacher, he found his vocation and has been a full-time potter since 1974.

Kerry Bosworth trained at Derby completing a two-year HND course. She joined Jonathan as a part time helper in 1995 and has worked full time with him since 2002. She studied calligraphy with Ewan Clayton and does the brush lettering on commissioned pots, as well as most of the throwing and decorating of the porcelain oven and tableware. This is robust enough for daily use and shows off the brushwork which has become Jonathan Chiswell Jones’s pottery’s trademark.