Boy in a China Shop: Life, Clay and Everything

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After his apprenticeship, Brymer Jones started out hand-making ceramics for retailers including Conran Group, Habitat, Barneys New York, Monsoon, Laura Ashley and Heal’s. He began to develop the Word Range for the first time; he was originally attracted to words because of their shapes, as he is dyslexic. Brymer Jones describes working with clay, shape and form as a natural affinity, as a result of his condition. I love watching The Great Pottery Throw Down. It might be a competition but it's so much more than that. It's about a group of like-minded people who like creating and are just enjoying being in the pottery and turning a lump of clay into something beautiful.

Ballet dancer. Front man in an almost famous band. Judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown . How did all that happen?Keith designs every single item on his potter’s wheel before he takes the prototypes to China to work with his colleagues at the factories. Keith’s Word Range has produced over 500 products and it is sold in over forty countries with a large and loyal following. To this day, the Word Range follows Keith’s design philosophy: ‘to create simple yet stylish products which are pleasing to the eye, practical in the modern home and, above all, make people happy!’ Keith has featured as a judge on The Great Pottery Throw Down since the show first started in 2015, and series 5 is airing on Channel 4 now. Since training at Harefield Pottery, Keith has created ceramics for huge brands such as Laura Ashley, Habitat and Monsoon. He is also Head of Design for MAKE International. Find out more about his work here.

In addition to the Word Range, Keith has finally introduced his Studio Range in Summer 2023. A gorgeous range of stoneware products which has a more organic aesthetic compared to his Word Range. I discovered The Great Pottery Throwdown on HBO here in the US in January 2022 and binge-watched all five seasons in nothing flat. TGPT was a welcome respite from the seemingly endless procession of depressing news – inflation, Ukraine, mass shootings, Covid, climate change... TGPT was the antidote I needed – a gentle show with gentle people and low stakes (no million-dollar prizes or scheming contestants here). At the helm, some wonderful hosts and judges who encouraged and supported the non-combatants with sensitivity and good humor, and sometimes even tears. That is, judge and master potter Keith Brymer Jones' tears. It was an art school teacher, Mr Mortman, who first introduced him to pottery. One day, Brymer Jones walked into art class and found a ball of terracotta clay was waiting at his desk. “Just looking at this lump of clay washed away all the anxiety I usually felt when I was asked to do anything in class,” he writes in the book. “It felt amazing, like I was holding my own imagination in my hands.” He began sculpting an owl. “My, my, that looks very nice, Keith!”, he recalls Mr Mortman saying: a rare piece of encouragement from a teacher that would stay with him for years. What’s the difference between a ceramicist and a potter? “An MA,” Keith Brymer Jones says without hesitation, letting out a belly laugh. “Art school.” He puts on a posh accent: “ ‘Oh no, I’m a ceramicist.’ There’s no difference, really! A potter’s just a bit more real, I would say. But then I would say that.”

Is Keith Brymer Jones Welsh?

Ballet dancer. Front man in an almost famous band. Judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown. How did all that happen? Keith has stated before what he loves about his ranges of mugs, cups, plates and bowls, especially in his now famous ‘Word’ range is the simplicity of the design, and the slightly retro feel about them. This has been coupled with some more, shall we say risqué, modern phrases some of which we won’t repeat here although you can find it here on this link😉 Designs range from the simple Happymug, to the wildly popular Daddy and Mummy ones. The whole range of the mugs can be found on this link What collaborations has Keith done? I was really excited to see that Brymer Jones wrote a memoir and I was not disappointed. His charm and self deprecating humour really shine through. The passion and knowledge he possesses of the art of pottery, the love of music, the work ethic, the little nuggets of his live, unexpected meetings with people who made great impact on his life, it's all told in a joyful and endearing way.

His ability to empathise with the other potters is striking. Perhaps this is because his route into pottery has been unconventional too. “I’ve never had a formal training, as such,” he tells me. When he was first announced as a judge on the show, a lot of people (shall we call them ceramicists?) were nonplussed, he explains. “Who the bloody hell is Keith Brymer Jones? Never heard of him. Oh, he must be one of those business types.” He spent most of his career making commercial pots out of limelight. Now he’s written an autobiography in the hope that he will demonstrate that there are other paths into creative careers that don’t involve art school. You can also try your hand at making your own clay flowers with Rita Floyd, our latest Newcastle Common artist-in-residence specially selected by Keith Brymer Jones to be in residence during the exhibition and to create a response to his work. Find out more about Rita here. Perhaps that’s why the Throw Down gets emotional. “Just thinking about it now, maybe that’s what it is with their work. They bring this work to me, and it’s so wonderful. It’s like, ‘Oh, I see you now, I get it. Look, you can do this.’ ” He pauses. “It’s a brilliant, brilliant feeling.”to create simple yet stylish products which are pleasing to the eye, practical in the modern home and, above all, make people happy!’ 💕 Every chapter of my book is based around an object (usually a pot) that's been significant in my life. It's just a trigger to let me go off in a lot of different directions and tell a few stories. A lot of stories. Dyslexia. The art teacher who changed my life. My Mother. My Father. A life-changing job interview with a man who lay under his car throughout. That video. Thank you to Keith Brymer Jones, Dan Thompson and Marj Hogarth for the development and curation of the exhibition. In these younger and more vulnerable years, his father gave him a piece of advice that he has been turning over in his mind ever since. “Make sure you do something you really enjoy, because you will be doing it for 85 per cent of your life.” Brymer Jones’s dad had never enjoyed his own job, and had been frustrated by it for the rest of his career. So after leaving school, Brymer Jones put an ad in the Ceramic Review: “Young, enthusiastic eighteen-year-old seeks apprenticeship in a pottery.” During downtime on the pottery throwdown Keith made my hair curl with some of his tales - he's a great raconteur and recounts his story in this book as he does in real life - with joy, charm & mischief.' - Sara Cox