Two Years in a Japanese Family Pottery Made Kirsty Adams a Potter. Decades Later, Her Work Went to Collect

Kirsty Adams is a studio potter in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, who throws vessels, moon jars and tableware on the wheel, with collections inspired by the memory of place. In 1995 she was accepted onto the JET Programme and sent to Kamiichi-machi in Toyama, Japan; there she spent two years learning ceramics at a small family-run pottery and came home to set up her own studio.

Kirsty throws mostly on the potter’s wheel and textures the clay with a Japanese wooden comb while throwing – a mark that has become her signature. She also textures some pieces with wet clay as she throws. She wants the process to show: “The mark left by a tool, the drip from a glaze – these are the things that bring a piece to life.”

Kirsty takes custom orders and works with interior designers; she hasn’t worked with an architect yet but would love to. An order takes from six weeks to three months, depending on whether she adapts an existing piece or develops a new one from scratch. Tableware starts from £25, and commissions and bespoke pieces from £850. She ships abroad and has sold to France, Germany, Japan, Dubai, the USA and Scandinavia.

Kirsty’s sales come from four channels in roughly equal parts: galleries (about 30%), shows (about 30%), commissions (about 20%) and her webshop (about 20%). Her work is listed in the Crafts Council directory, which shortlisted her for the Brasserie Constance commission, and she sends a newsletter to buyers about every quarter. She sells anywhere up to around 300–600 pieces a year.

In 1995, Kirsty was accepted onto the JET Programme, run by the Japanese Embassy’s Council for Local and International Relations, which sends graduates to Japan to integrate with its culture. She was placed in Kamiichi-machi in Toyama, a town of 24,000 people on the west coast of Honshu, between the Japan Alps and the Japan Sea – “with me as the only English speaker in the town.” For two years she learned ceramics at a small family-run pottery in nearby Tateyama-machi.

Clay had always been there. She made things from mud from the age of about three. Her mother was a languages teacher and a weaver, always making things, and kept a bag of clay in the house – Kirsty used to watch what she did. Her earliest buyers were in Japan too: the town of Kamiichi organised a solo show of her work, and she was shortlisted for a noodle bowl competition run by the Nissin noodle company and became part of a huge exhibition for it in Tokyo.

“This also gave me more confidence to pursue this as a career.”

Kirsty throws predominantly on the potter’s wheel, then textures the clay with a Japanese wooden comb tool while throwing. This has become a signature of her work. She also textures some pieces with wet clay as she throws. “I love process and to see the maker’s mark or story of the glazing technique.”

Her collections start from places. The Cullernose collection, made for Collect 2026, is a site-specific collection based on the volcanic, layered basalt of Cullernose Point on the Northumberland coastline, not far from where she lives and works in Newcastle. She rediscovered the area after moving there from London – and realised she had stayed very near Cullernose Point as a teenager with her father. Other collections were inspired by Howick Hall, Iceland and the Algarve.

The pieces represent the strands of Kirsty’s practice, all wheel thrown in a variety of clays: commissions such as the bowl vases for Brasserie Constance, the Cullernose collection for Collect 2026, and collections inspired by Howick Hall, Iceland and the Algarve, as well as her kintsugi collection. Inspiration comes from provenance and the memory of place, and the story of the making and glazing stays visible in each piece. Photos: Clare Bowes Photography, Michael Lawler Photography, Agata Pec.

Kirsty sells predominantly to private buyers in the UK for their homes, as well as to interior designers and spaces. Her pieces are made for any room in the house rather than being limited to one. She ships abroad and has sold to France, Germany, Japan, Dubai, the USA and Scandinavia.

She takes custom orders and works with interior designers. An order can take anything from six weeks to three months, depending on what is needed as part of the process – or whether she is developing a new product from scratch or adapting something she already has. Tableware starts from £25; commissions and bespoke pieces from £850.

One commission came through a competition. The Crafts Council directory shortlisted Kirsty to put together a proposal for a new restaurant at Fulham Pier, part of the Fulham Football ground, set up by award-winning chef Adam Byatt. She proposed large bowl vases as the restaurant’s signature vases, inspired by Constance Spry – the florist at Fulham Pottery, after whom the restaurant, Brasserie Constance, is named. It was a three-step competitive selection: she was paid at the second stage to put together a PowerPoint presentation for the final selection.

After Japan, Kirsty settled in London and sold at the London markets – Spitalfields, Greenwich, Brixton and Camden – before social media. From 1998 she was making in clay in a mews studio in Streatham Vale, South London, found through a friend of her sister’s, and went through “some difficult and questioning periods”. Her business properly began in 2000, with funding from the Prince’s Trust. That year she moved to east London, where there were many more opportunities, and became part of the London art scene through Hidden Art of Hackney. She shared a studio under a railway arch in Mile End with other ceramicists who had set it up.

Today Kirsty’s sales are spread across galleries (about 30%), shows (about 30%), commissions (about 20%) and her webshop (about 20%). She sells anywhere up to around 300–600 pieces a year, depending on commissions and how many smaller selling shows she does in a particular year.

Being represented and listed has opened doors. Kirsty went to Collect 2026 with the organisation Design Nation, whose presentation was called Topophilia – a person’s emotional connection to a specific place. Her Cullernose collection was already in development, and it fitted the brief very well; she also had to be approved as an exhibitor by the Crafts Council. Her galleries include Mint Gallery, The Biscuit Factory and Thrown Contemporary.

Online, she isn’t sure what actually leads to sales on Instagram. “I think it is a combination of this and other things like newsletter etc.” She sends a newsletter to buyers quarterly, sometimes more often.

Subscribe for more like this – full stories and digest roundups land in your inbox about once a week.

In 2005, after her elder child was born, Kirsty nearly gave up making in clay. Between 2005 and 2010, with two small children, she decided to be a painter instead and moved away from clay. One of her paintings, inspired by the north Norfolk coastline, was selected for a group show in Crystal Palace, south London, around 2009.

Then the clay itself let her down. A clay body she had used since around 2018 in her Icelandic collection began to fault in 2023: one of its ingredients had changed because of a shortage caused by the war in Ukraine, and pieces started cracking after the glaze firing. “It did frustrate me for a while.”

Two things happened in 2010 that drew her back to clay. Her cousin commissioned a small tableware collection as a gift, and she received a telephone call from the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, inviting her to exhibit her work there. “I guess I gradually built my practice again from there.” Coming back, she realised her practice was “something I wanted to fight for.”

The cracking clay became a turning point of its own. She had been interested in kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending, since her years in Japan, and the technique was already sympathetic to her way of working. So she decided to use the cracks and began a collection based on mending. When she submitted her kintsugi pieces to What is Precious?, a sustainability showcase with Design Nation, the response was great – she sold perhaps more pieces with kintsugi than without. Her kintsugi pieces are now at the Centre of Ceramic Art in York Art Gallery, as part of its Hokusai Japanese print exhibition, Making Waves.

“I make small runs of studio ceramics for sale via my webshop, galleries and shows. In addition, I make one-off pieces and limited edition collections for specialist exhibitions, galleries and commissions.”

Who: Kirsty Adams
What: Wheel-thrown studio ceramics – vessels, moon jars, tableware and one-off pieces
Where: Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK
Started: April 2000
Audience: 2,500 Instagram followers; quarterly newsletter
Customers: Up to around 300–600 pieces a year
Price range: Tableware from £25; commissions and bespoke pieces from £850
Custom orders: Yes, 6 weeks to 3 months
Ships: Abroad – France, Germany, Japan, Dubai, the USA, Scandinavia
Works with designers: Yes
Channels: Word of Mouth & Offline, Your Own Newsletter