Pottery West is collaborating with product designer Benjamin Stanton as part of Collaborative, a group exhibition at County Hall Pottery as part of London Design Festival 2025.
We are presenting Sêcan, a sculptural installation construction from thrown ceramic and oak.
We took as a starting point the shape of a series of vessels Catherine and Matt had been making in the studio for testing glazes. We have made and fired a series of stackable versions of these forms, all glazed in white - a skeletal spinal column of uprights. Then we added as a new component for our play, blades of oak, cut and sanded to an organic shape, Like blades of grass, or equally, blades of a propeller.
The first installation is the culmination of this play - a modular and explorative piece. And the second is a scaled up version, pushing our collaboration and its earlier prototyping towards a more finished design for a piece of furniture.
“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.”
