Bramley Pottery
Artisans | Gifts & Homeware | Hobbies & Interests | Home & Garden | Shoplocal Voucher Participants
Bramley Cottage, Blackfield Lane Ballinger, Great Missenden HP16 9LL
Handmade Pottery
My name is Hayley Farrelly and I am a potter working from my log cabin at my home in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire. Each piece is designed and made by myself using a range of pottery skills including wheel-thrown, slab-building, coil work, drape forms and sculpting. I love to use the delicate and translucent celadon glazes for my pieces, adding texture and depth with patterns, stamps and mixing different complimentary colours to the stoneware. I also use the Potter's Choice glazes which achieve a more vibrant and often drippy, iridescent effect which means that each piece is truly unique. The joy of opening the kiln after each glaze firing really is something to experience as you never really know what delight you are going to see or what unexpected glaze effect you are going to achieve.
I started learning pottery skills only three years ago when I took the plunge and joined a local pottery class. Each week my teacher would set me new challenges and his mantra 'every piece of pottery made is an opportunity' stuck in my head. As I learnt from my mistakes I honed my skills into the potter that I am today. Not being satisfied with my weekly class I decided to set up my own pottery studio at home. Our log cabin in the garden became my creative space and with potter's wheel and kiln installed my weekends are now filled with making, throwing, glazing and creating.
As a mother of two sons and working full-time, my pottery hobby gives me the headspace that I need to be creative in this upside down world we are living in now. My husband often says that a few hours of 'potting' shows in my face as I am calmer and more centred after a busy working week. I suppose it gives me an opportunity to be kind to myself and embrace something that brings me joy to make and to others who buy the pottery I create.
I hope you enjoy looking at my work. Please come and visit me in the studio (by appointment and when restrictions are lifted) and maybe you can even have a go yourself with one of my pottery workshops, which will be launched later in 2021.
Hayley xx