Neolithic-style Wiltshire Earthenware - Avebury Range: Dishes & Mantel Vessels
By Wendy Farnham
Orginal artworks - each one handmade and unique
Earthenware with colour slips and clear glaze
Wide range of shapes, colours and sizes - four examples above
The large versions of shallow dishes measure up to 45cm in diameter
Prices range from £50 to £395 each
Wendy is a Wiltshire artist who, in this new and exclusive 2023 Avebury Range, uses the ancient history of her home county to inspire her ceramics, basing their form and decoration on the symbols connected with the Avebury burial mounds which date back to the Neolithic period, up to 6000 years ago.
She works primarily in white earthenware decorated in coloured slips and uses a variety of mark making, including sgraffito and slip trailing which creates a sort of embossed effect.
She pinches small pieces of clay to produce the walls of her pieces, often grading them to fine, porcelain-like edges, and creating a characteristic dimpled effect which she then emphasises with a shiney transparent glaze. Her love of colour and pattern is very evident.
"My ceramics are inspired by the local landscape. In particular, the stone circles of Avebury, West Kennet Long Barrow and Silbury Hill. From early childhood I've been fascinated by burial chambers and Neolithic sites. I love the way they exude a calm atmosphere, having been carefully positioned within the landscape.
"The imagery on my pots is very much from my imagination, based mainly on Neolithic burial chambers and stone circles, but also including other imagery such as stone coffins, crosses and Celtic symbols. The landscape in which these features are found is also important to my work and comes through, subtly, in colours and shapes."
We are showing a wide selection of Wendy's Avebury Range in our 2025 exhibitions, all on an exclusive basis.
ABOUT WENDY FARNHAM
Before becoming a mum, Wendy worked as a primary school teacher. Later, she took an Access/Foundation Art Course at Swindon College where she pursued her life-long passion for working with clay.
She went on to gain a BA Honours Degree in Three-Dimensional Design (Ceramics) from Bath Spa University, where she benefitted from first class teaching by Felicity Aylieff, Takeshi Yasuda and Philip Wood, among others. Wood taught her slip and glaze making which greatly inform her current and new work.
After her degree she was selected for and exhibited at New Designers, Islington, London. She has shown at Swindon Museum and The Toll House Gallery, Lechlade.
Wendy is married to Neil and has three grown-up children.