Jean is a designer-maker working in ceramics. An experienced professional illustrator, she now uses her illustration skills to carve and model her drawings into clay. She makes her own plaster moulds and slip casts each piece in parian clay. Jean references the traditional processes employed in Wedgwood’s Jasperware, combining sprigged work with clean contemporary shapes. A keen birdwatcher, Jean is aware of the decline in some British bird species since she was a child in the 1960s. She works to raise awareness of the conservation status of Red List British bird species. Jean’s images rely on the visual similarity of fossils to the low relief of ceramics sprigs, creating a metaphor for the threat to our native birds’ existence. The pieces are part of a body of work entitled ‘Future Fossils’. They demonstrate different approaches to expressing the extinction threat to British birds. The small skylark vases depict a British Red List species, the feather vase uses fossil like feathers as an emblem of all birds and the medium vases present a Dodo, a symbol of bird extinction together with current threatened species. Jean is based in Cheshire.

All pieces are high fired and carefully sanded meaning that the clay is fully vitrified and therefore water proof. All are handmade and will vary slightly from piece to piece.