Bryony Rich
Bryony grew up playing in her father's pottery Studio. Making pots became second nature at a very early age. After school she studied at Carmarthen CCTA Art College , specialising in fashion and textiles. This interest took her travelling to Sri Lanka and Thailand visiting ceramic and silk painting workshops.
On her return, she divided her working life between the pottery studio with her father and cooking in restaurants that specialised in international cuisine. Bryony has been doing this balancing act of having two careers for five years,however, she is now working full time in the studio and has taken over the gallery.
Simon Rich
For many years Simon Rich has been producing fine ceramics with his most distinctive glazes from his pottery in West Wales, UK.
Simon had such a strong interest in pottery at an early age that he started when fifteen years old, to teach the craft to his fellow pupils at school.
Upon leaving school, Simon looked for an outlet for his creative talents and joined the studio of the famous Alan Caiger-Smith at the Aldermarston Pottery. He remained there for five years before establishing himself with a series of exhibitions and shows.
Simon is primarily concerned with creating pleasing shapes and forms. He conjures up images in his mind and turns them over and over until they are ready to be brought into being. He likes to explore the full potential of any one shape, developing it and endeavouring to expand on its creative potential as much as possible. He stops short of extremes, however, as his aim is to create pottery of classical and harmonious beauty.
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Simon excels at many techniques including terrasigilata, copper fumed raku, turquoise and azurite glazes and crystalline glazes. In the latter, the zinc crystal glaze is applied to porcelain and is made by melting sand, soda ash, alumina, zinc and flint into a glass compound. It is then ground to a fine powder. Before glazing,an exact amount is weighed out for each pot,and metal oxides are then added to produce the variety of colours that can be seen in the work. The firings vary according to the amount of colourant oxides and glaze adjustments. This produces constantly evolving glazes on the pieces.