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Description of Work

For the past two decades English ceramist David Roberts has devoted himself to the making of large coil built and Raku fired vessels. He is one of the first British ceramists to specialise in high quality contemporary Raku, the making of which he has helped to popularise as a serious discipline within contemporary British ceramics, in the many exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations he has held throughout the U.K., Europe and the U.S.A. His ceramics are represented in many private and public collections including the National Museum of Scotland, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of Wales and the Ulster Museum.

David lives and has his studio in the Yorkshire Pennine mill town of Holmfirth.  He enjoys a wide reputation for his distinctive ceramics. Initially simple, monumental vessels, these ceramics exhibit a concern with the hollow, volumetric quality of hand built pots together with a fascination for, and control over, surface incident arising from the Raku process. David’s early work was decorated with rich crackle or copper lustre glazes. These surfaces have recently been abandoned to investigate textural treatment the clay body and its interaction with smoke-marking and deep carbonisation. The resulting vessels are strongly evocative of David’s increasing engagement with the contours and stratification of stone and landscape.