Madeleine Muir

Ceramics found me early. I was lucky enough to go to a school where art and creativity was a hugely encouraged and we had the most fantastic pottery studio and teachers. I threw myself into a project exploring Islamic art and tile design - the geometry, the repetition and the history of the art was something I found particularly inspiring. After leaving school, I carried on making wall plaques with Celtic designs. Again, I was drawn to the interlaced forms and the meditative rhythm of working them out in clay.

Life moved on, and sadly me and my clay parted ways for a long time. Then I moved to Bristol, the most amazing place full of artists and particularly abundant with pottery studios. A studio called Make opened a stones throw from my house and I booked on to their independent potters sessions. I found such a warm, welcoming environment and it was just the space I needed to reconnect with clay, and to fall back in love with it and it was also here, I finally got to grips with throwing.

Before long once a week wasn't enough and I started working at the kitchen table at home... hand building, slabs, anything that didn't need a wheel. Once I outgrew the kitchen table, I got a wheel and took over the basement which is no longer our gym, but is now a fully functioning home pottery studio. Up until now, the wonderful kiln fairies at Pottymouth Workshop have been firing my work, but a kiln is arriving soon and I look forward to all the trials and tribulations I am sure that will bring.