Studio pottery

Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur ceramists working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs, especially those that are not intended for daily use as crockery. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves.^[1] Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists, or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.

Some studio potters now prefer to call themselves ceramic artists, or simply artists, for example, Grayson Perry, based in London. Studio pottery is represented by potters all over the world and has strong roots in Britain. Art pottery is a related term, used by many potteries from about the 1870s onwards, in Britain and North America; it tends to cover larger workshops, where there is a designer supervising the production of skilled workers who may have input into the pieces made. The heyday of British and American art pottery was about 1880 to 1940.

Since the second half of the 20th century ceramics has become more highly valued in the art world. Several large exhibitions worldwide have been held, including the now defunct Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design (SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York), which included ceramics as an art form. Ceramics have realized high prices, reaching several thousands of pounds for some pieces, in auctions houses such as Bonhams and Sotheby's.