Five Clay Artists You Must Watch Out
This article brings together five women who have shaped their lives around clay in thoughtful, steady ways. They work in different places and with various techniques, yet they share a habit of paying close attention to the world around them and allowing that attention to guide their hands. Their practices grow from long hours in the studio, careful observation of plants, weather and landscape, and a willingness to keep testing and adjusting until something feels right. What follows is not simply a survey of ceramics, but a look at how five makers build a relationship with material through patience, curiosity and a willingness to learn from every experiment.
Each of these artists approaches clay from a slightly different angle. Kate Malone spends years developing glazes, treating her shelves of test tiles as a living archive of questions and discoveries. Hitomi Hosono builds porcelain pieces leaf by leaf, informed by her regular walks through parks and her close study of plant forms. Sara Dodd works with layers of coloured porcelain that capture shifting tones in the sky, letting firings introduce gentle irregularities. Dawn Candy shapes pots that carry the rhythm of the prairies she calls home, using pattern and repetition in a quiet, thoughtful way. Erin B. Furimsky brings together handbuilt forms and layered surface processes, filling her studio with tests that help her refine colour and pattern over time. None of them rush; they let clay set the pace.
Their work often begins with looking. Plants, weather, seasonal changes, small movements in light and shadow all play a part in the forms they choose and the surfaces they build. These influences do not appear as literal copies in their pieces. Instead, they become starting points for structure, rhythm and gentle detail. Clay becomes a way to explore how things grow, accumulate or shift, whether in a porcelain leaf, a coloured sheet of slip or a handbuilt form covered in fine marks.
Beyond their studio practice, each contributes to the wider ceramics community in meaningful ways. They teach in colleges and community studios, share technical knowledge, take part in public commissions, support youth programs and appear in exhibitions around the world. Their work reaches both museum shelves and everyday tables, and their influence includes not only the objects they make but also the people they encourage along the way.
Together, these five makers offer a picture of contemporary ceramics shaped by care, close observation and long-term engagement with material. Their approaches vary, but they all show how clay can hold steady thought and many years of looking, testing and making.
Kate Malone @kate_malone_ceramics
Kate Malone MBE has spent more than three decades working with clay, and her energy for the material is easy to see in everything she does. After studying at Bristol Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, she began building a career that now spans studio work, public commissions, and a long pursuit of glaze chemistry. She works from two studios, one in Kent and another in London, where shelves hold years of glaze tests and experiments.
Much of her sculpture grows out of close looking. She studies how plants swell, twist and open, how fruit forms and how structures repeat themselves in nature. These observations give her a steady supply of forms to build from, and she often layers her pieces with generous detail and rich surface finishes. Her interest in glazes has become central to her practice; she treats them almost like a field of scientific research, adjusting formulas, firing repeatedly and building a vast archive as she goes.
Malone’s career ranges widely. She has created large tiled facades for buildings, fountains for hospitals and parks, and major installations for libraries and schools. Her work has travelled far beyond her studios, appearing in exhibitions across Europe, the United States and Asia, and it is held in public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and many more.
Alongside her studio practice, she has given a great deal of time to supporting others who work with clay. She has judged on The Great Pottery Throw Down, co-founded FiredUp4 to bring ceramics into youth centres and serves as an ambassador for groups such as London Potters and the Museum of the Home.
Included here as one of five remarkable women working in ceramics today, Malone brings a blend of hands-on curiosity, technical skill and commitment to public engagement that has shaped both her field and the communities she works with.
Erin B. Furimsky@erinfurimsky
Erin B. Furimsky’s sculptures carry the feeling of something growing slowly across a surface, the way patterns in nature gather themselves without losing their sense of structure. She builds her forms by hand, often beginning with shapes that hint at domestic objects, then shifting them through pressure, carving and the steady addition of small elements. The surfaces accumulate floral suggestions, lace-like geometry, tiny cellular marks and loose linework that settle together into a steady rhythm of color and pattern.
Furimsky studied ceramics at Penn State, the University of Florida and The Ohio State University. Her path since then has been shaped by residencies at places such as the Archie Bray Foundation, Oregon College of Art and Craft and Red Lodge Clay Center. She has shown her work widely for more than two decades, appearing in museum and gallery settings across the country, while continuing to teach at Heartland Community College and other programs. Her teaching and workshop history is extensive, and she often shares the small decisions and experiments behind her surface processes.
Her Instagram and website show a studio environment full of test tiles, in-progress pieces and close studies of pattern. Viewers can see how she layers transfers, decals, hand-drawn marks, resist processes and color fields to guide the eye around a form. These glimpses reveal a maker who treats surface as a place for curiosity, not simply decoration.
What stands out in her work is the balance she finds between calm structure and the lively accumulation of detail. Each piece invites close looking, offering clusters of marks that seem to settle into place only after many rounds of decision and adjustment.
As part of a group of five women working in clay today, Furimsky brings an approach grounded in steady experimentation, long commitment to teaching and a sustained exploration of how form and surface can shape each other. Her practice offers a thoughtful presence in the field of contemporary ceramics.
Hitomi Hosono@hitomihosono
Hitomi Hosono’s porcelain work grows from close study of plants. She often walks through parks in East London, noticing how leaves curl, how veins branch, and how flowers hold their shape. This slow looking guides everything she makes. Trained in Japan, Denmark and later at the Royal College of Art, she has built a process that is both measured and patient. She designs sprigs from real botanical forms, creates moulds, presses hundreds of thin porcelain leaves, carves each one, and then layers them over wheel-thrown forms until the underlying shape disappears. Larger works can take well over a year from the first drawing to the final firing.
Her surfaces have a quiet, chalk-like presence, sometimes finished with gold inside bowls or boxes, giving small pieces an almost jewel-like quality. Her dedication to detail has drawn the attention of major museums, including the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, both of which hold her work.
Hosono’s pieces sit at the meeting point of nature study and careful craft. Each vessel feels as though it has grown rather than been assembled, built leaf by leaf with steady hands and long practice. As part of a group of five remarkable women working in ceramics today, she offers a calm, meticulous approach that shows how clay can capture the rhythms and structures found outdoors, translating them into forms that invite close looking.
Sara Dodd@saradoddceramics
Sara Dodd works with porcelain slip much like a painter might work with colour and atmosphere, though she stays firmly rooted in the physical nature of clay. She pours and layers thin sheets of coloured porcelain, creating work that feels light yet steady, almost like watching clouds shift during early morning or late evening. She often draws from the sky for ideas, noticing small changes in tone or the way light moves across a surface. These observations guide her palette and the quiet transitions that appear in her pieces.
Her process takes time. She mixes pigments by hand, tests them carefully and lets the kiln introduce its surprises. The fired layers curl or lift at their edges, catching light in subtle ways. This interplay of light and shadow gives the work a sense of movement without anything actually moving.
Dodd studied at Cardiff Metropolitan University and spent a period working alongside Katharine Morling. Since then, her work has been shown widely, including at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and fairs in Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Awards have followed, among them recognition from the Wales Contemporary Open, the International KOGEI Crafts Awards in Japan and the Young Masters Emerging Women Artist Award. She is a member of the Craft Potters Association, Contemporary Applied Arts and the Homo Faber network of European makers.
Now based in Deptford, she continues to develop her practice and often collaborates on commissioned projects with designers and architects. Her contribution to this group of five women ceramicists comes through a calm, attentive way of working with colour, material and light, creating pieces that invite a slower pace of looking.
Dawn Candy@littlesisterpottery
Dawn Candy works in Red Deer, Alberta, where she makes pottery under the name Little Sister. Her path into ceramics began in an unexpected place. She first studied analytic philosophy and religious studies at the University of Lethbridge, then moved into visual art at Red Deer College, where clay became central to her practice. Today she divides her time between teaching community classes and developing her studio work.
Her pieces often start from time spent paying attention to the land and seasons around her. She works with patterns, small marks and repeating forms, building surfaces that feel calm and thoughtful. Many of her pots carry traces of the prairie environment she lives in, whether through colour choices, leaf impressions or quiet rhythmic lines. The work is meant to be handled and used, and it carries a gentle sense of care for everyday routines.
Candy’s studio practice sits alongside her teaching, which has become an important part of her life. Through local classes and workshops, she brings people into the world of clay, encouraging steady exploration rather than hurried results.
As part of a group of five women ceramicists, she offers a grounded approach shaped by close looking, steady craft and a strong connection to the slow pace of her surroundings.
Reaching the end of this feature, what stays with us is how these five women approach clay with steady intention rather than hurry. Their paths are all different, yet each one shows what can happen when someone gives time to slow work, close observation and the kind of experimentation that unfolds over years. The pieces we see in galleries or on a table are just the visible part of much longer stories that take shape through trial, attention and a genuine interest in what the material can do.
They remind us that ceramics is shaped as much by daily practice as by any single finished piece. Testing glazes, carving hundreds of porcelain leaves, pouring slip in thin layers, marking a pot with a steady hand or building a pattern through repeated decisions are all part of the rhythm of their studios. These choices might seem quiet from the outside, but together they make a body of work that has both substance and presence.
What also stands out is how much they give back. Whether teaching beginners, supporting community groups, contributing to public projects or sharing glimpses of their process, they help others understand the value of taking one’s time with material. Their influence reaches well beyond their own benches and kilns.
As we step away from their stories, we see a field shaped not just by skill, but by commitment, patience and an openness to the slow unfolding of ideas. These makers show that clay continues to offer new possibilities to those who stay curious and keep paying attention.
