Steve Booton

“I completed my B.A.(Hons) in Ceramics at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1981 and after obtaining my PGCE in 1982. I opted for a teaching career in Sheffield, partly, due to my then growing family and definitely my desire to pass on the delights of clay and design.

My teaching career lasted 14 years until an accident at work resulted in a period of incapacitation and ultimately, a career change and a complete cessation of anything clay related.

During the intervening years all but one of my four children have left for various parts of the globe and I have endured a variety of jobs all of which lacked the creative stimulation of ceramics and art.

In 2006, while in St Ives for my daughter's wedding, I visited a ceramics museum opposite the Sloop Inn near the harbour. On spotting a piece by Shoji Hamada, one of my ceramics heroes, I had what my daughter called a moment of clarity and with my 50th birthday in sight I made the decision to return to ceramics and retired from full-time work to concentrate on making pots again. I bought a small kiln and an old kickwheel and my ceramics career was rejoined.

My Studio has evolved from very humble beginnings, always on a shoestring and I relish the 'make do' experimental element it brings to my work. Having to use what is available around me, all the way down to opportunistic, after hours digging of clay from a hole opened in the road in front of my house, brings an immediacy to my pieces and expands my creativity through invention.

I have always been drawn to Japanese ceramics in particular tea ceremony vessels. Their simplicity of form combined with simple shino and ash glazes are my present focus and theme of work.”