we have moved

David Walters, one of South Africa's most distinguished potters, was also the founder and driving force behind its first craft route, Natal's Midlands Meander and is also a Fellow of Ceramics SA.

David has been a potter for 35 years, moving from regulation stoneware in the 1970s to a 20-year love affair with white, hard, lustrous porcelain.

Some of David's hand-thrown porcelain is smoke-fired, a technique also known as pit-firing.

After graduating with a BA Fine Arts from the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, where he and his wife Michelle Anderson both majored in Ceramics, they established the Nkwaleni Pottery in Hilton before moving on to Caversham Mill at Lidgetton.

Tragically, the old mill was washed away in the 1987 floods and they decided to move to England - mainly, David says, `to experience the challenge of working in a rigorous environment that has the best potters in the world'.

At Kenninghall in Norfolk, they established The Particular Pottery in an old Baptist Chapel and David became Vice Chairman of the Suffolk Craft Society, acknowledged to be the most successful in Britain. After a decade, the call of Africa become too strong to resist and they came home to face a new challenge - renovating the derelict Victorian mansion that once belonged to Franschhoek's first teacher. The Ceramics Gallery, now restored to its former glory, incorporates a series of galleries, an extensive pottery and David and Michelle's home.

David wins the Ceramics Southern Africa award for Functional Ceramics!