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BIOGRAPHY
Miranda
Thomas was born in Palisades, New York, to English parents on February
6, 1959. She is the granddaughter of Arthur Davis, who was the architect
who designed several London buildings of historical significance
including the Ritz hotel. Since that time, she has traveled and
lived in many diverse parts of the world, including Australia, Italy,
and England. She was introduced to pottery by her art teacher, Ross
McBride, in Australia at the age of 16. It immediately became her
passion and she has spent her time since then expressing her love
for life through her pots, expanding and increasing that skill through
many experiences and teachers. In 1977, after spending 3 years studying
for her degree in Ceramics at the West Surrey College of Art and
Design in Farnham, England, she met the famous pioneer of modern
craft pottery, Michael Cardue. It was while working for a year with
Michael, in the heart of Cornwall, that she honed her skills as
a thrower and formed in her mind a lifestyle in which to make pots,
drawing inspiration from the English countryside. She then spent
another two years working with world-renowned English luster glaze
decorator, Alan Caiger-Smith. She moved back to New England in 1983,
where she set up and designed a line of pottery for well-known glassblower
Simon Pearce, before finally creating her own workshop in 1988.
Apart from her strong skills as a thrower, Miranda has an extremely
in-depth and broad range of knowledge of many different decorating
techniques, involving brush work, slip carving, and glazes, which
she uses to create these pots. The pots are designed for simple
everyday uses, but she uses them as a medium to convey a broad range
of ideas and feelings about her life. It is this inspired mixture
that makes these pots unusual, and the reason why so many people,
from so many walks of life, want to have them in their homes.
Miranda Thomas works with several assistants in her studio, and
is married to furniture maker Charles Shackleton.
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