As part of our Joyful Expression campaign, John Smedley have collaborated with London based artist Celia Dawson on an exclusive collection of ceramic pieces to celebrate the three feature colours of our SS24 season – Summer Sky, Coral, and Sundown Orange.
Celia trained in ceramics while studying for her BA at Central St Martins. Once graduated, she went on to do her MA at the Royal College of Art. The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) have been great supporters of Celia’s work, and in 2018 she was personally selected by Tom Helme to receive his scholarship for her MA second year, providing funding for materials and education fees.
Over time, Celia has developed her own way of working with both cast glass and ceramics.
When creating ceramic pieces, Celia tends to work with porcelain – “the porcelain really allows for a whiteness that the colour then can really pop on.” She uses a spinning tool called a ‘jigger jolly’, which she loves working with as it means there is no beginning or end to a pot and the colour flows throughout. She likens this to colour in the natural world – “when I look at nature, it’s the same thing, it just continues to go on.”
Celia tends to use muted tones in her pieces so has enjoyed the vibrancy that these new colours have brought to her work. “It’s quite exciting to see that emerge in the pieces I’m making because it’s not something I’ve really used before… there’s a real expression in them and actually it makes it very vivid.”
Of Joyful Expression, Celia says – “the way I’ve interpreted Joyful Expression has been about thinking not only the expression of the way I make, but seeing how clay is expressive, the ideas and the way we see nature is expressive, but that also colours are expressive.”
“When someone says ‘John Smedley’, I think of quality more than anything,” Celia says. “I'm aware of how the clothes are made with the care and attentiveness, and with real specialism to the craft.”
“I'm really conscientious about the way I make things, and I want things to be made well… I care about the finish and the quality and the refinement, and I'm aware of that being something that's really important to John Smedley as well.”
