Our amazing feats of clay: Gallery’s

By Karen Bate karen@westdorsetmag.co.uk

Inspiration, fascination, and excellence comes in many shapes and sizes – you just need to know where to look.

At 20 Gloucester Street in Weymouth, you can find Lea Phillips in her studio where she throws, fires, and decorates the most magnificent collections of abstract, vibrant and breathtaking tableware, lamp bases and large, one-off ceramics. She shares this light, airy and contemporary space with sculptor Ama Menec.

Lea may have taken a while to warm up – she undertook a one-year apprenticeship at the renowned Dartington Pottery aged 39 before working there for a year – but coming from a long line of brickmakers, clay is in her blood. Her grandfather lived in one of the Brickyard Cottages in Chickerell.

The Happy Crab Gallery, named for both artists who were born in July, celebrated its first anniversary – fulfilling Lea’s cherished dream to live and work in Weymouth.

Lea said: “The ceramics I make today are a contemporary interpretation of the studio pottery tradition, rather more colourful than the brown pots favoured by Leach and his followers, but with the emphasis on function and hand making on the wheel still rooted in the classic tradition.

“I spent over 20 years working in Devon and benefited from arts orientated visitors and a local culture where buying and using handmade pots was not uncommon.”

South Devon has a high proportion of makers and artists, partly due to the legacy of the Elmhurst’s contribution to encouraging the crafts at Dartington Hall. The origins of Dartington Pottery lie in the early 1930s when Bernard Leach, often regarded as the founder of the AngloJapanese tradition and the modern studio pottery movement, set up the first pottery at Shinners Bridge.

Lea said: “The pottery training workshop was started in 1976 by Marianne de Trey who was working into her 90s and lived to 102. So, I was very conscious of being part of a living tradition.

“Having lived in rural Devon for 20 years, I’m really appreciating being in town and being part of this vibrant