Contemporary Art, Furniture & Craft Gallery · Licensed Café
It is a pleasure to introduce Emily Myers’ ceramics to Sladers Yard this autumn 2025.
Emily Myers has always been a potter, ever since she first encountered clay at school in North London aged 12. Her Foundation year was at Camberwell and she went on to compete a degree in ceramics at Bristol School of Art from 1983-87. At Bristol, she was particularly influenced by her tutor Walter Keeler and her friend and mentor Clare Conrad. She then returned to the vibrant craft scene in London where she enjoyed sharing studio space at London Bridge and in Hoxton.
In 1990, the year she met her future husband Matt Somerville, she also received a Crafts Council setting-up grant and became a member of the Craft Potters Association. Her work had gone through a number of imaginative and interesting incarnations based on the throwing wheel before the late 90s when a move to the country replaced architectural influences with organic ones. The rolling hills and furrows of North Hampshire are reflected in the carved lines within the pots. Gradually she developed the precise faceted and carved forms that we recognize today.
Emily Myers is a Crafts Council selected maker and member of the Craft Potters Association. She has demonstrated regularly at Art in Action and other craft fairs. She has had solo shows at Beaux Arts in Bath and Contemporary Ceramics in London. Her work has also been shown in Tel Aviv, Hamburg, Paris and New York. This is her first exhibition at Sladers Yard.
“Emily Myers is a consummate, careful thrower… her range of work quietly celebrates the possibilities of clay.” – Emmanuel Cooper
Emily’s work starts life on the wheel. What she calls ‘the interesting part’ takes place at the leather-hard stage when she alters the work in various ways. Often, she cuts the pots off their bases and flattens or tilts them, faceting some with a cheese cutter or carving them with a loop turning tool. The work is both exacting and time-consuming.
Emily mainly uses terracotta clay fired to stoneware temperature to achieve the rich dark brown colour. She uses a variety of slips, oxides and glazes to create different effects. She has developed a range of matte barium glazes which she mixes herself from raw materials.
“Control and precision are important aspects of my work, as is a desire to achieve quiet, pleasing, balanced forms. Inspiration can come from a wide range of sources including organic seed pod forms, ancient verdigris helmets or mechanical cogs. The precision of the spiral stripes in some of my work defines the forms. The matte barium glaze and contrasting red stoneware clay make the pieces look almost like metal.” – Emily Myers
For more information about Emily Myers please contact Anna Powell on 01308 459511 or email: gallery@sladersyard.co.uk
