Jo Bosley

I originally studied textile design at West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham and from there I produced printed, dyed and hand painted fabrics which I sold at markets and craft fairs. In 1993 I joined a weekly pottery evening class in East Hendred, Oxfordshire run by Pauline Thompson, by then an elderly but still active and talented potter. She encouraged her students to develop their own style of ceramics but also to experiment with different techniques and clays and to look at examples of pottery, from recent and ancient history. My inspiration and a lot of my research came from visiting the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to look at examples of ceramics by cultures such as Minoans and Aztecs.
My interest in ceramics has increased over the years and I am now working full time with my friend and fellow potter Lyn Harrison as part of Steventon Green Pottery. I work in stoneware crank clay, a strong, gritty clay which has a grainy, rustic appearance. I use hand building methods, mainly coiling and slab work and I finish the pieces with slips and glazes before firing to 1240 degrees. The strength of the stonework clay and the high firing temperature make the finished pots frost proof. My subjects are domestic, the birds in the garden, hens and geese, cats and wild animals. I try to make pots that have a function and I have developed the ‘bird bowls’ with this in mind, but other pieces are purely decorative.