Lucy Rutter

Lucy spent twenty years making pots on a Leach kick wheel in a garden shed, and firing them in an ancient, manually-controlled electric kiln, collecting studio pottery and 1960s second-hand pottery books for inspiration. During this time she studied and taught poetry, gaining a first from Oxford in Creative Writing.

 Lucy refined her craft by studying hand-building, glaze technology and wheel-throwing at St Faith’s in Maidstone, Morley College in London. After being granted a sabbatical from her job at the University of Kent, she was able to set up her own studio and since then she has made wheel-thrown stoneware pottery for kitchen and table use for a wide variety of wholesale and private clients

 The relationship between form and function is very important. The observation of pots in the studio, and their use in the domestic space, inform many small revisions of the work. This allows it to evolve, in terms of shape, weight and surface. Her final designs have a pared-back functionality, influenced by Scandinavian design, and perhaps by formal poetry.

 After a ten year break from teaching, Lucy has recently returned to run throwing workshops at the Leach Pottery.