Dylan Bowen
Dylan Bowen, born in 1967 in North Devon, is a British ceramicist celebrated for his bold, expressive slipware. Trained first under his father, potter Clive Bowen, and later at Camberwell School of Art, he now works in Oxfordshire with his partner, ceramicist Jane Bowen.
His work combines traditional English slipware with contemporary influences from music, outsider art, and abstract expressionism. Using techniques such as pouring, trailing, and brushing slip onto wheel-thrown or hand-built forms, he creates energetic, gestural ceramics that have earned him the title of the “action painter” of British pottery.
A Fellow of the Craft Potters Association, Bowen has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including shows in France and Japan. His ceramics are prized for their spontaneity, vitality, and freedom, making him one of the leading figures in contemporary slipware today.
CR Masterclass by Tom Knowles Jackson. August 2023.
Based in St Chloe, a small village in the Cotswolds, Tom has been passionate about pottery since childhood. He began his training under Steve Sheridan at Bryanston School in Dorset.
He creates a range of functional cook and serve ware for the table and home. His work is high-fired stoneware, using a carefully selected palette of glazes derived from iron, copper, and wood ash. Tom enjoys producing simple, enduring forms that are both functional and capable of enhancing the everyday rituals of eating, drinking, and sharing.
All of his pots are made on a McMeekin Momentum wheel, focusing on functional stoneware for the table, oven, and sideboard, with an emphasis on the ceremony of eating and drinking. His vessels, containers, and forms are robust yet refined, often high-fired in gas reduction with wood ash, white, and tenmoku glazes, sometimes accented with expressive slip decoration.
In South Gloucestershire, Tom has established two open-access ceramic makerspaces: The Clay Loft near Stroud and Clay@The Fold, between Malvern and Worcester. After careers in the Army and in business across the Middle and Far East, he has returned to the enduring call of ceramics, dedicating his life to creating beautiful, useable pottery
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