SALLY GILES POTTERY
In 1968 I worked as an assistant for Emmanuel Cooper in his Westbourne Grove pottery in London. Here I started to throw on his kick wheel and did lots of theoretical work on glaze calculation.
At this time Emmanuel, together with Eileen Lewenstein, launched Ceramic Review magazine. As Sally Doe, I typed the first issues on my small manual typewriter. Forty years later, in 2019, the magazine celebrated its 300th edition.
In 1970 I was an assistant to Michael Leach, son of Bernard, at his Yelland Pottery in North Devon.
In 1971 I started my first studio pottery in the village of Hertingfordbury in Hertfordshire where I built a 13 cu ft gas-fired kiln and produced reduction-fired stoneware.
In 1974 I moved with my husband and young son, James, to Abbotsham, near Bideford - my original home. At Wakewell Pottery we rebuilt the gas kiln and, for the next seven years, I went into regular production of domestic stoneware.
Our daughter Eve was born in 1974 and another son, Dylan, in 1980.
After moving to South Devon in 1981, I qualified as an adult tutor and taught pottery in a number of adult education classes and schools in the Torbay area. I was particularly interested in working with adults who had physical disabilities, many of them residents at the Cheshire Home in Brixham.
I established my own studio workshop at Cockington Court, Torquay, selling directly to visitors. By now the gas kiln had been re-designed to fit into a smaller working area and my work was shifting towards more individual pieces, still in stoneware.
In 2006 I completed a 3-year BA degree course in Contemporary Crafts at Falmouth College of Art, where I explored a number of new glass and ceramic techniques.
From 2010 to 2018 I worked from my own large studio at Gunwalloe on the Cornish coast near the Lizard. Here I was producing some stoneware, but with a greater emphasis on individual porcelain pieces.
My work was sold to the public directly from the showroom and, more recently, at the Penwith Gallery St Ives.
In 2018 we moved back to my roots in North Devon and I am now working from a studio next to the house near the village of Sheepwash. I sell at the Burton Art Gallery in Bideford, as well as the Penwith Gallery in St Ives.
