Paul Young

Paul Young is very much a modern celebrant of the great Staffordshire tradition of slipware, but also of the broader inheritance of European folk art. Now based near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where he makes in a converted 19th century railway station, he trained at Sheffield and Chesterfield College of Art, close to where his ceramic heroes Ralph Wood, Thomas Whieldon and John Astbury worked, and it is to this rich legacy that Young now adds in his inimitable way. His vibrantly made and decorated work ranges from fine jugs, dishes and bowls for the table to enriched boxes, pew groups and candelabra, all covered in generous variously coloured slips and superbly modelled. His considerable technical control and individual characterisation add a very contemporary edge to his work, a convincing reinterpretation of this rich vein in European ceramics, and one that is also quintessentially English.

David Whiting