Barbara Gittings MSDC

Ceramics

About Barbara
Barbara Gittings, originally from South Africa, came to London in 1973. She worked in fashion for 35 years before becoming a ceramic artist. Her work explores the line between order and chaos and the juxtaposition between control and spontaneity. Her combination of the ancient techniques of Nerikomi and smoke firing, alongside her unusual modern shapes, places her work in a unique position within the field of Nerikomi ceramics. Japanese Nerikomi often features very regular geometric repetition, whereas Barbara’s work embraces abstraction and asymmetry while still referencing the geometric 
Biography Back to top

Barbara Gittings's smoke-fired, Nerikomi Porcelain 'Vessels' are contemplative and sensual. They have a sense of calm and serenity and she hopes a connection that will make the viewer want to touch and be drawn in.

Her Nerikomi patterns are made by staining the clay, layering different colours, slicing and reassembling until a loaf of pattern is created. Slices from the loaf are then either press moulded or slab built. The pattern therefore is through the clay, integral, and not a surface decoration.

She embraces inexactness and experiment in her process, blending precise technique with a loose and casual application. The elemental uncertainty of working with clay, especially the random and uncontrolled shifts and reactions that take place when creating pattern through the clay, she finds inspiring.

Barbara is fascinated by the geometry in nature, especially as growth and random chaotic forces such as weathering, sedimentation and erosion skew and distort the initial perfect symmetry. She is constantly exploring these balances between symmetry and asymmetry, perfection and imperfection, the line between order and chaos and the juxtaposition between control and spontaneity in her work.

"Nature can be enigmatic and one is instinctively trying to decipher its unknowable qualities. Images and patterns sink into the subconscious, to be released when one engages with the clay and the submerged information emerges to dictate the work in progress."

Barbara is drawn to irregular repetition, primitive mark making and soft, earthy colours.


Resumé Back to top

Barbara came to ceramics later in life, after spending over three decades working in the fashion industry. Her journey with pottery began in 1999 through adult education classes, and she quickly developed an obsession with clay. Primarily self-taught, Barbara also attended several intensive courses, including a week of smoke-firing with Jane Perryman and a City and Guilds course at City Lit with Robert Cooper and Dan Kelly.

  • 2006 - 2013 lived, worked and exhibited in France
  • Returned to the UK in 2013 and set up own studio

EXHIBITIONS

  • Patina Gallery, Santa Fe: Nerikomi, 11 Sept 2025
  • Cambridge Contemporary Art, 11 Sept 2025
  • Ceramic Art London 2024, 2025
  • No Hard Shoulder, The Regency Town House, Hove, AOH 2025
  • CAA Craft in Evolution, London Craft Week 2025
  • Contemporary Applied Arts New Members Show 2024
  • Oxford Ceramics Fair 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
  • Contemporary Ceramics, New Members Show, February 2024
  • Clay College Gallery, Surface Decoration, March/April 2024
  • Bircham Gallery, Barbara Gittings, September/October 2024
  • Grove Vale Ceramics, Guest Artist, April/June 2023
  • London Design Fair, September 2023
  • Potfest By The Lake, Compton Verney, 2022
  • Bircham Gallery, Holt FestivalExhibition, 2022
  • Cambridge Contemporary Art, 2022
  • Art in Clay Windsor 2021
  • Celebrating Ceramics 2019 & 2021
  • Bircham Gallery Joint Show Helen Terry, Barbara Gittings, 2021
  • Autumn Show Silson Contemporary, 2019
  • Art in Clay Hatfield 2018, 2019
  • 'A Pot In The Hand' Round House Gallery, 2019
  • 'Imbalance' Artichoke Gallery 2019
  • Artists Open House at 9A Hove Place, Brighton, 2013 - 2019 aoh.org.uk miararts.com
  • Gallery57, 2017
  • MADE Bloomsbury, 2016
  • Emerging Potters Show at Bils & Rye Gallery, 2016
  • Innovations in Ceramic Art, Cambridge, 2016
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