A Matthew Chambers piece holds the eye in a way that is hard to explain until you have stood in front of one. The concentric rings, the earthy tones, the sense of something both geometric and organic, generate a quiet hypnotic pull, the kind of object people return to look at again.
Chambers works without drawings, letting one form lead to the next during the making itself, drawn to the circle for its lack of beginning or end.
Each piece is built from dozens of individually thrown sections, assembled while the clay is leather hard, then dried slowly over weeks to avoid warping. Colour is mixed directly into the clay body rather than applied after. The result looks engineered, yet it is entirely handmade, layer upon layer, with no two pieces following the same internal pattern.
Chambers trained at Bath School of Art and the Royal College of Art, and his work is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the Ulster Museum, alongside galleries including Cavaliero Finn.
He lives and works from a small studio in St Lawrence on the Isle of Wight, and would be glad to talk you through how a piece comes together.
