Conversations in Clay on the first floor is part of a series of craft showcases where paired ceramists explore similar themes or processes in their work.
This new display features ceramic artists Ellie Thomason and Louise & Simon Nadin (Ard Beag Ceramics) who use similar techniques for firing and glazing the pots.
Salt and soda glazes have an element of unpredictability in the kiln creating flashes of colour and beautiful surface sheens to the pots. Salt glaze is usually used on stoneware creating a glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture which was formed by throwing common salt into the kiln during the higher temperature part of the firing process. Sodium from the salt reacts with silica in the clay body to form a glassy coating of sodium silicate. The process of using a wood fired kiln makes each piece completely unique, so although there are many similarities within the two bodies of work each piece has its own identity.
Header image: Ellie Thomason
Past artists in the series
Fiona Robertson and Pauline Beautyman: 6 January – 28 February 2026
Both makers, Fiona Robertson and Pauline Beautyman, draw inspiration from their surrounding natural environments, yet produce markedly different bodies of work. The distinctive marks applied to their diverse forms give each vessel its own character and visual presence. Their shared approach to surface decoration conveys a strong sense of storytelling: narratives emerge through pattern, colour, and form, inviting viewers to explore their personalities embedded within each object.
Fiona Robertson began her journey into the world of ceramics after stumbling across a little pottery in the far north of Scotland in 2014. She spent several years learning from professional potters and attending local classes, before continuing her ceramics education through a variety of workshops. After setting up her own studio – Greenscares Pottery – near Braco, Perthshire in 2018, Fiona honed her craft and began to find her ‘voice’ in ceramics, discovering a love of carving into clay using a variety of tools to create patterns and textures. Working predominately in stoneware, the inspiration for the patterns in her work comes from the repetition seen in the wild flora and fauna in the glen where she lives. The colours she uses in her glazes reflect nature’s simple palette – the purple heather, deep green fields, rusty brackens in the winter and the many shades of blue in the vast Perthshire skies.
Pauline Beautyman is a potter rooted in the landscapes of Argyll, where the rhythm of the coastline and contours of the hills shape not only her views but the very materials and surfaces of her work at Sea Drift Pottery. The project of creating bottles began as a combination of imagination and technical problem solving. Often finding partial sea battered ceramic bottles on the local shore; a series of handmade ceramic bottles were imagined into being bringing with it interesting technical challenges to be tackled. They provide a wonderful form to explore texture and adaptations to the surface. The making and creating of Pauline’s work begins with the land itself. She walks and explores in all weathers, observing the subtle shifts in colour, texture, and pattern across the terrain. These impressions guide marks, carvings, and surface textures to then emerge intuitively as she makes.
