Craftsman Dylan Bowen is really looking forward to the Ceramics Fair

When I left Camberwell School of Art in 1991, like a lot of recently graduated students I lost focus. I started working as a builder and decorator, always meaning to get back to clay at some point.

But I see now that my time at art school had been very privileged. I had a full grant, I had amazing tutors who I could call on, and few of the financial pressures that can bear down on today’s students.

I was free to dream and be pretentious and ridiculous, things that we took for granted, but sadly seem to have got a little lost in the inexorable drive towards the quantification and monetarisation of every aspect of education.

Art is pretty hard to measure but I believe it enriches and enhances all our lives.

The downside was that on leaving I had no real idea of how to proceed with my career!

I moved to Oxford in 1995. My wife Jane was born and brought up here and it seemed inevitable that we would end up in Oxford. The city does exert a pull on those who have tried to leave!

Jane worked at the Rose & Crown on North Parade and had a pottery studio out at Northmoor, where she would go between shifts to make mugs, plates and jugs. We had met some six years earlier in Devon where she had been working for my father, Clive Bowen, also a potter.

I realised when we had our first child it was now or never, so we set up a small studio just off the Iffley Road and I started making pots again, mine being pretty terrible versions of Clive and Jane’s work.

The workshop was small and cold. We had a couple of wheels, a pile of clay and an electric kiln. The technique we used was called slipware — essentially the pots are decorated with liquid clay of varying colours, making the simple glazes ourselves. The beauty of pottery is that all you really need is some clay and a kiln to fire the work — it can be as simple or as complicated as you like. The pots we made we tried to sell locally and we had a stall at the Gloucester Green market for a few years. There were a few shops and galleries in the area which sold my work but it was slow going at first.

The path of a potter is a long one, but gradually I began to have a few exhibitions, my work selling in galleries around the country, and more importantly I was making pots that were beginning to have their own identity. I was invited to become a Fellow of The Craftsman’s Potters Association, and have held exhibitions in The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, Contemporary Ceramics Centre in Bloomsbury, Collect at Saatchi Gallery, Ceramic Art London at Royal College of Art, exhibit permanently in the Oxford Ceramics Gallery in Jericho and have given talks and demonstrations in The Ashmolean.

We now work from an old blacksmith’s workshop in Tackley, a little bigger but still pretty cold in winter. I am using the same materials and equipment, the pots have got bigger and messier and I am enjoying it more than ever.

My work has become more and more sculptural over the years and I now feel that I now have my own style and voice.

This weekend sees the 15th annual Craft Potters Association Ceramics Fair opening at St Edward’s School in Oxford, one of the highlights of the pottery calendar, which features more than 60 potters and ceramic artists from around the UK.

This year from Oxford there will be Phil Jolley, Rose Wallace and myself among a sea of British potters. To be involved in such a prestigious show does cause me to reflect on my beginnings here.

For more information go to dylanbowen.co.uk and for ticket information oxfordceramicsfair.co.uk