Collaborative
Saturday 13 September – Sunday 9 November 2025
County Hall Pottery is pleased to present Collaborative, a cross-disciplinary exhibition for London Design Festival 2025 that explores the creative potential of connection through clay.
Rooted in the tactile and transformative nature of ceramics, Collaborative brings together five leading ceramic artists, each paired with a creative practitioner from a different discipline. Spanning music, woodworking, architecture, and culinary arts, these partnerships reimagine ceramics as a shared language of innovation, functionality, and artistic dialogue.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a commitment to exchange: between people, materials, and practices. From collaborative design processes to co-authored works, Collaborative reflects a dynamic interplay between tradition and experimentation, studio practice and lived experience.
“Collaborative is a testament to what can happen when artists step outside their usual practices and embrace the unknown together,” says County Hall Pottery’s Creative Director, Emma Louise Payne. “Each pairing has developed work that reflects a dialogue—not only between two people, but between materials, disciplines, and communities.”
Presented as part of London Design Festival 2025, Collaborative invites audiences to consider ceramics not just as solitary practice, but as a medium for shared invention and cross-pollination. The exhibition celebrates the possibilities that emerge when touch, tradition, and collaboration converge.
Artists
Joe Hartley & ANEW Recovery Community in Tameside
Joe Hartley is a designer based between Manchester and Stockport. He studied at Manchester Metropolitan University on Three Dimensional Design and since graduating in 2012 has continued to work closely with organizations such as British Ceramics Biennial, Castlefield Gallery, Grizedale Arts and The New Craftsmen. He co-founded Yellowhammer in Stockport and Altogether Otherwise in Manchester.
ANEW provides clients in Greater Manchester with a wide range of long-term support services for those recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.
Edmund Davies & Otis Ingrams
Edmund Davies is a studio potter based in Norwich, his work centres functionality, tactility and material. His work blends influences from British studio ceramics, modernist design, and global ceramic heritage.
Otis Ingrams founded OTZI leather design studio, working with interior designers, artists and brands to create unique, functional pieces. He has also completed an MA in Product & Furniture Design at Kingston University.
Francesca Anfossi & Frances Gibson
Francesca Anfossi holds an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, 2008. Anfossi work most often takes the form of ceramics, workshops, cooking classes, or communal events, and offers the participants opportunities to learn new skills and form new social bonds.
Frances Gibson is a London-based artist working across ceramics, illustration, and children’s workshops. Dividing her time between her studio in London and her family pottery in Leicestershire, Gibson creates work that is playful, exploring themes of nature, humour, and queerness through illustrative style.
Carla Wright & Isobel Anderson
Carla Wright studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, London and runs the community ceramic studio Common Clay in Bexhill. She recently exhibited solo at Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne, and in group shows at Ruup & Form, London, and The British Ceramics Biennial, Stoke-on-trent. Wright also recently participated in a residency at Hospitalfields, Scotland.
Isobel Anderson is a vocalist, sonic artist, and composer whose practice spans sound, performance, and installation. She holds a PhD in Sonic Arts, and her writing has appeared in academic journals including Organised Sound, as well as Moving Mountains (2023), an anthology of nature writing by disabled and chronically ill authors.
Pottery West & Benjamin Stanton
Pottery West is the ceramics studio of husband and wife makers, Catherine and Matt West. Originally trained in Fine Art and Design at Goldsmiths, we turned our hands to clay ten years ago via a love of craft, slow-living and interest in food culture.
Fucha Industry is a UK based industrial design practice founded by Benjamin Stanton in 2022. Ben has extensive experience in the technical development of furniture design and interior architecture.
