Elspeth Hart

Elspeth creates hand-built domestic and sculptural pieces that reference ancient artifacts, contemporary design, and the colours, textures and rhythms of the land. She works with a variety of clays - reincorporating reclaimed clay and found materials - and different firing techniques. Some pieces are fired in reduction, which gives the deep browns, oranges and yellows you can see in her work, others in oxidation, which gives the blues and greens. She likes to use clay that has a bit of tooth to it, enjoying the interplay between the rusticity of the grogged clay and the refined forms with delicate surface detail.

Elspeth has a BA in Fine Art, and an MA in Ceramics. In the years between the two she apprenticed with the potter Margaret Gardiner, and established her own ceramic practice. It was during her MA in Plymouth that she develop her hand-built work, finding that the slower process of coiling, pinching and scraping back allowed for softer, more expressive forms to emerge. 

Elspeth has lived and worked in East Anglia, Kent, West Wales and Cumbria and is now based in Moretonhampstead, Devon. She takes inspiration from the ancient landscape of Dartmoor and the human imprints upon it.