Joy Stevens

In our little summer house, hidden away in a corner of West Dorset, I make handmade porcelain ceramics, imprinted with flowers and plants foraged from the hedgerows and the increasingly wild patches in my garden.
My love of working with clay began during my art foundation course, when I was 18. Fascinated by the way it could pick up any surface pressed into it, and the endless opportunities this presented, I went on to complete a BA (Hons) degree in Ceramics at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. But travelling, working, and raising my children meant playing with clay got put on hold. Now, over 20 years later, I have started making and developing new work.
I make in small batches, hand-building my pieces from thin sheets of porcelain paperclay. Each item is totally unique and is informed by my love of visible joins and metal vessels.
My ceramic work has always involved pressing found textures into the clay, but when I started experimenting with flowers and plants, I was hooked from the very first go. I love playing with composition on the template of clay I have prepared, and then, after rolling the plants into the clay, the excitement of gently peeling them back to reveal the tiniest details. It’s the delicate and transient nature of wildflowers, especially, that draws me to them. By pressing them into clay, tiny details are revealed and preserved forever once the clay is fired into ceramic.