Nick Membery has been making stoneware pottery for 30 years and is inspired by the colours and textures of the landscape in Carmarthenshire, Wales. After about 25 years of making a repeated catalogue range, Membery gradually started making pots which, while still always intended for use, are of a more individual nature and also a response to nature.

Most of all they are to be enjoyed and, when coupled with the ceremony of eating good food in good company, they can be truly life enriching. His work, in its own small way, is the antithesis of mass production and consumerism. Membery realised a long-held ambition early in 2019 when he built and started firing his work in a large wood-fired kiln.

He now feels like he is at the beginning, with each pot unique and each one’s own idiosyncrasies to be celebrated and embraced. He says: “Increasingly, my pots take on the colours and tones of the environment that surrounds me. More and more, I gather local materials, unique to my location, for decorating and glazing my work: clay, ash and stone are all used to inextricably connect me, and my pots, to where I live.’ Born in Worcester in 1968, Membery completed a BA (Hons) at Middlesex Polytechnic before honing his skills as an apprentice to Mike Goddard at the Manningtree Pottery.

He has been a CAA maker member since 1995.