Hazel Johnston

(1933 – 2011)

Fellow of the Craft Potters Association

Hazel was born in Cumbria and studied ceramics at the Manchester College of Art, graduating with First Class Honours. She then went on to teach at Mid-Warwickshire School of Art.

Her own work was initially domestic slipware, then stoneware and in 1977 she set up a studio to produce thrown porcelain bottles and bowls. Though her work is simply finished in subtly coloured mixtures of metal oxides under a dolomite glaze, with restrained use of gold lustre adding emphasis to some of her pieces, clarity of form is the most critically important and main characteristic of her work.

Hazel was a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association and the Royal Society of Arts. Her work was represented in major galleries and can be seen in public and private collections including:

Pernath Collection, Switzerland;
Egner-Piert Collection, Germany;
Aberystwyth University Ceramic Collection, Wales;
University of Arizona, USA.

Significant solo exhibitions:

1981 Peter Dingley Gallery, Stratford upon Avon
1983 Gallery Munsterberg, Basel, Switzerland
1985 Gallery Farb Worb, Berne, Switzerland
1990 Aldringham Craft Centre, Suffolk
1996 Daventry Museum, Northamptonshire

She regularly took part in CPA, Gloucestershire Guild and Midland Potters exhibitions.

This exhibition will include privately owned pieces of work representing Hazel’s ceramic career, with technical information, as well as photographs and biographical details, telling a story of a quietly modest artist whose talent lives on in her work.

There will be approximately eighty pieces for sale.