Leading Clay Sculptors Who
Specialize In Ceramic Techniques

Other sections of this website looks at how art pottery interacts with contemporary clay art and who the prominent clay artists currently are. There is also a review of how clay and art can combine together to produce Turner Prize winning creations. The 'Clay Art' section gives a summary of the age old and mind boggling history of ceramics right up to the present day. Recommended reading for any self-respecting collector, student or artist.

On this page, the emphasis is on clay sculptors. Some sculptors work on a smaller scale for industry and others work on a larger scale as fine artists for gallery or outside exhibition.

They are breeds apart, yet utilize the same artistic medium.

My work comes into the decorative (industrial) art category.

The sculpt shown on top and right is a commission I completed for the Coalport Factory, part of the Wedgwood group. It was designed and marketed by off-page retailers Compton and Woodhouse.

The name of the piece is 'Birthstone', finished in pure white fine bone china with gold accessories.

The Birthstone piece was interesting in that the making of it involved an ancient technique known as sprig moulding. All of the lace patterning on the upper half had to be sculpted on flat clay, off the sculpt. A plaster of paris mold was then taken. Clay was manually pressed into the mould and then removed. The resultant thin strips of patterned clay were then added to the dress.

Other clay sculptors working within decorative industrial art specializing in female scultures in the UK are John Bromley, David Lyttleton, Jack Glynn, Nada Pedley, Valerie Annand and Neil Walsh. Masters from the past include Alan Maslankowski, Charles Noke, Leslie Harradine and Peggy Davies.

Andrew Bill, Andrew Hull, Michael Abberley are all talented sculptors specializing in animal and fantasy figures.

However, Smith's work, is fine art rather than decorative industrial art, or pottery.

Each piece is individually sculpted in clay then decorated and fired.

You can see more of Paul Smith in the 'clay artists' section .

Another 'fine art' clay sculptor is Christy Keeney.


------ A Christy Keeney Sculpt------





Keeney sees his pieces as paintings in three dimentions.

He is observing the human spirit as it is expressed in all its forms.

Completely unlike the way I work, he lets the moment dictate his direction. He has no definite plan of where the sculpt is going beforehand. This must be an exhilarating way to work.

Keeney is a clay sculptor, there's no two ways about that. However, he crosses over into the art potter category because he does use slab technique and he has all the knowledge and skills involved in decoration, glazes and firing.

Many clay sculptors are breaking boundaries and are uncategorizable. Keeney's work is definitely fine art though. My work is not fine art, it is decorative art and I have none of keeney's skills in ceramics - I leave that side of it to the egg-heads in the factory or my local pottery shop.


Talking about fine art, its now come the time to draw a deep breath and look at clay sculptors who specialize in working on larger exhibition pieces.

Think of Auguste Rodin and you'll know where its going. These artist do 'big'. They are 'Grand Fomage'. They do 'expressive' or 'momumental'. They can't be fiddling with small insignificant stuff and nonsense.

Look back a hundred years or so, and there is a painting called 'The Artist's Studio' by John Ballantyne, c.1865. He painted sculptor & artist Sir Edwin Henry Landseer working in the studio of fellow sculptor Baron Marochetti.

Landseer was depicted sculpting the clay originals for the famous lions he created for Trafalgar Square, London. You can see him dwarfed by the lion. Typical of the Grande Fromage type of artist he had an argument with 'lesser' artist Ballantyne for not painting it right and showing the painting in public before the bronzes were finished.

Standing at about 40 feet high, you can see how big the stucture is by looking at the scale of the clay sculpt of the woman figure.

It makes a fine sight at sunset in Northumbria.

Sean Henry also goes for a realistic color finish on some of his exhibits. As can be seen on the piece shown in Summer 2005 'Catafalque' on Golden Square, London.

You can read a great article on Marin on American sculptor Patrick Johnson's website - go to The Figurative Clay Sculptures of Javier Marin

Johnson sums it up perfectly: "Clay is an extremely smart choice of medium...... Clay has qualities of fragility under tension and great strength under pressure, so it suggests conflicting duality by its nature.

"Clay is the earth".

I couldn't have put it better myself.