Nicholas' vessels looks machine made until you learn what went into it. The curves seem too exact to have come from a wheel and a pair of hands, and that gap between precision and process is the whole point. He is drawn to how unstable perception can be, how light and time change what we think we see.
He works in Parian porcelain, a fine clay developed in Stoke-on-Trent in the nineteenth century. Each piece is thrown thick-walled, then turned on a lathe by hand while leather hard; six hours of unbroken concentration with no room to correct a slip. In his Flux Work series he invites chance in, firing two forms together so that one melts and wraps around the other.
His work is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza. He trained at the Royal College of Art, has won the Cersaie Prize and a Blanc de Chine Honour Award, and shows with Cavaliero Finn at Collect and PAD London.
