Jonathan Barrett-Danes

"Although my primary interest was the wheel thrown object I soon realised that a lot of people simply don’t know how long it can take to make a teapot, for instance, and I began to think that if I was going to carve a living out of this I was going to have to make something else. I suppose, looking back, I must have drawn from the work of my parents Alan and Ruth Barrett-Danes. I started with a pig, and to be honest it came quite naturally to me and since then I have been concentrating on developing handbuilt animal forms and other more sculptural pieces. My animal forms still embody the same concern for form and profile that sustained me in the search for the ideal teapot, and I feel that I have been able to transfer many of the elements that excited me in that development. This has endowed the work with a strength and humour."