Maker in Focus

Peter Arscott is a painter and ceramicist who uses either grogged porcelain or stoneware glaze-fired to nearly thirteen hundred degrees. Before this happens, he bisque-fires his pieces to a thousand degrees and then paints oxides and stains on them before dipping them in a transparent glaze. Everything is made by hand or on a slab roller, he does not use a wheel, and little planning goes into the shapes or the colours – cutting out and joining pieces and fragments as the mood takes him, or brushing on certain colours because he has seen a Paul Klee painting or been on a walk in Wales. As a result of this approach, he does not make things twice, and though you can put flowers in his vases he himself is not interested in function and is more interested in playing with form and allowing the pieces to work as paintings.

He now lives in Herefordshire and has a studio in Ledbury. He is a founder and a director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, and is involved in the arts locally.