Mark was born in 1956 in South Shropshire. An inspirational art teacher who had trained with Mick Casson at Harrow encouraged him to take up pottery at school and a lifelong passion began. Mark got his first job working as a thrower for Colin Carr, a potter in Derbyshire.

Mark then worked for sculptor Fritz Stellar at the Square One Design Workshop, near Stratford-on-Avon. Fritz was a charismatic entrepreneur. When Mark wasn’t throwing pots, he worked on huge ceramic murals for the emerging new town centres. But it was the time he spent with Russell Collins, one of the finest teachers and throwers and the most patient man Mark knows, that gave him the confidence to set up his first workshop in 1975 with the help of a New Craftsman’s Grant from the Crafts Advisory Council.

It was Johnny Leach who persuaded the CAC to award Mark the grant. He saw a cocky 19 year old who believed that anything was possible. Mark felt he had a point to prove – he didn’t come from a particularly privileged background, he had little education but he was determined to build a pottery and sell what he made. He is probably one of the last of that generation who grew up under the influence of the Bernard Leach tradition and to benefit from his philosophy as a way of life.

Mark moved the Pottery to West Wales, but it was the 1980s and tastes had changed again. Stoneware domestic pots were hard to sell and Mark made thousands of terracotta bird feeders and parsley pots for mail order firms which paid the mortgage and helped him move back to South Shropshire. There he rebuilt his workshop and kilns in a redundant village school where he continues to work today. He made terracotta garden pots for many years, undertaking big commissions for the National Trust and other estates until the physical toll of working on such a scale forced a return to high fired stoneware.

Mark is known as a ‘big ware’ thrower. He works instinctively, enjoying the spontaneity of making marks in clay. The pots are mostly thrown and then fired in a wood kiln using glazes made from materials found locally, wood ashes and quarry dust, often over slips dug from stream banks.

‘It’s been a hard road, keeping afloat for fifty years but I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’ve been very privileged to have had the freedom to make pots for so long and live my life the way I’ve been able to. This exhibition is a celebration, and an appreciation of my good fortune’.

Mark Griffiths, December 2024

Keep a look out for our forthcoming Exhibition to celebrate Mark’s 50 years as a potter:
Mark Griffiths: Half a Century – Full of Craft
Entrance Gallery
5 April - 6 July 2015