Elspeth Owen

I first came across Elspeth Owen's work in a super exhibition last year at the Craven Museum and Gallery of a local man's collection of studio pottery. In amongst the Takeshi Yasudas and David Roberts was a remarkable bowl with the most amazing smoky, textured surface by Elspeth. It was pretty much the best thing in the show and since then I've managed to get a couple of her pieces for my own collection. She was born in 1938 and has led an interesting life - for details see her comical website: Elspeth Owen website. She is now based in an old cricket pavilion in Grantchester near Cambridge. Oxford Ceramics Gallery stock her work and have also held a solo show recently and have a catalogue available that went with it.

'Tiny Light Trumpet'. Unmarked. 3cm (height) c9cm (diameter)




Tiny conical-shaped red bowl. Unmarked. 2.3cm (height) c7.5cm (diameter)

Looks like lichen on limestone. Lovely.

I like the little trumpet piece, small but interesting , a bit like the early henderson pieces in some ways

Grantchester is a Really very,very posh village on the edge of cambridge. Jeffrey Archer lives in the Old vicarage,and its full of houses worth umpty ££millions.
The Old Pavilion in which Elspeth Owen works,is something else again. When I was last there a few years ago,it was a rather like a large shed,with overgrown greenery on either side of the path walking up.The studio is like the perfect artists's studio.Chaos personified with bits and pieces,and fings just everywhere.
She is a hand builder. So her production has always been limited. For numerous years she has had an Open Studio as Part of Cambridge Open studio season.

philpot wrote:Grantchester is a Really very,very posh village on the edge of cambridge. Jeffrey Archer lives in the Old vicarage,and its full of houses worth umpty ££millions.

I was at a PV where Mr. Archer was also a guest a couple of years ago and never had the "bottle" to go up to him and say that, "I think that you lived near me once". I so wish I had because when he asked where that was I would have loved to have said, "When you were in Belmarsh Prison".

After that a useful tip.

Elspeth's work is low fired and I stuck a price label on the side of one of her vases once that I was selling. When I sold it I decided to take the price label off.............. along with most of the surface. End of sale - my customer got it for free.

did she mark any of her work?

Not as far as I'm aware.

Largish bowl

Base

Around 10.0 cm high.

A group of her works, I've loved her work since I was a student, at a show she did about seventeen years ago with Edmund De Waal at the Alpha House Gallery Dorset, where I got the seal form, two I brought from Oxford Ceramics and the other two a job lot at auction. I'm a bitofa fan! None are marked.