Paul Scott

PAUL SCOTT is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. He is internationally acclaimed as the founder of a new branch of current ceramic practice. He was one of only three ceramic artists chosen to meet the Queen at the Royal Academy of Arts as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations.

Paul?s seminal book Ceramics and Print and the subsequent exhibition Hot Off the Press heralded an upsurge in graphically applied surface decoration in ceramic studios across the world as well as on ceramic teaching courses. In her article in Keramik Magazine, Stephanie Brown wrote that this exhibition brought together an international group of ceramists, artists, sculptors and printmakers consolidating the interdisciplinary range of ceramic and print combinations. Since then Paul Scott has been in great demand internationally as an exhibitor, curator and lecturer. Paul has subsequently published Painted Clay: Graphic Arts and the Ceramic Surface.

Stephanie Brown writes that Paul Scott has gained international prominence in promoting a practice at odds with the traditional truth to materials and form/function concerns of craft potters, and indeed, of many studio ceramists. A leading proponent of ceramics and print, he has been instrumental in demonstrating the contemporary creative potential of a combination used in industry for hundreds of years to mass-produce decorative wares and tiles. ? A decade ago finding print in a piece of studio ceramics would have been unusual, but it is now becoming a relatively common occurrence, not least because of Scott's pioneering example.

Paul uses the surface of clay as a canvas for the largely political and environmental concerns of his limited edition plates, and for his site specific murals. He has embarked on a subversive tribute to Blue and White industrially produced pottery which he calls collectively his Cumbrian Blue(s) commemorative ware. Following his research into industrial archives and technologies, he has collaged engraved imagery from 19th century plates with digitally-altered photographs, which he screenprints onto bought plates. This approach is postmodernist in its use of appropriated, ready-made forms and imagery, and refers to the popular interest in collecting Blue and White pottery, and the spurious limited-edition commemorative plates issued by tableware manufacturers.


Paul Scott is now experimenting with the creation of new three dimensional sculptural forms based on the imagery of the printed landscape in ceramics. This includes virtual landscapes from assemblages of 3D pieces and more conventional tiles, such as exhibited at the recent COLLECT art fair at the V&A. This is a reversal of usual ceramic practice where form is primary, and surface imagery and pattern secondary.

More artworks below