The charity aims to provide the funding necessary to allow a one year apprenticeship and applications are always being sought from potters and apprentices. The Trustees meet throughout the year, so funding permitting, an award can be made at any time.

In order to be able to make these partnerships happen Adopt-a-Potter needs to raise funds. One of our ideas has been to produce a series of strictly limited edition tee-shirts, each one designed by a well known artist or potter. These tee-shirts are of good quality and washable. Anyone buying one will not only have a piece of wearable art but will also be safe in the knowledge that they are supporting a very worthwhile venture.

The first in the series has been designed by Tom Hovey, a Welsh artist from Newport. His work frequently embodies a political message, often cutting edge and with a keen sense of observation and piercing wit. The image has been specially drawn for us and will appear nowhere else. Tom has just finished working for the Satchi organisation. You can see more of his work at www.tomhovey.co.uk. Tom's tee-shirt has been sponsored by Potterycrafts and Briar Wheels and we are grateful to them for their support.

Adopt-a-Potter was thrilled when internationally renowned artist Breon O'Casey agreed to create an image for the second in the series. For Breon O'Casey to agree to work with us was extremely exciting. Breon's work is eagerly sought after and appears in many public and private collections including the Tate Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

It was with great sadness that we learned of Breon's death in May of 2011. He lived and worked near to St Ives in Cornwall and was respected and admired as a painter, sculptor, jeweller and weaver and more recently as a printmaker; working closely with the late Hugh Stoneman and experimenting with lino-cut, etching, and carborundum forms of printmaking. His prints have an immediate impact, combining simplicity of form and line and often vibrant colour, with his highly personal vision of birds, trees, fruit, abstract forms and more recently, the figure.

Breon O'Casey had been closely associated with the St Ives' School of painters and sculptors. His apprenticeship to the sculptors Denis Mitchell and Barbara Hepworth confirmed his ability to work with his hands. He was a close friend to Bernard Leach and to Shoji Hamada and was one of the few painters who admitted to the influence in his own work of the ways in which potters decorate a pot. There is a full obituary of Breon on The Guardian website here.

Adam Frew, formerly an apprentice of founder member Lisa Hammond, is now an established potter and artist, with his own studio near the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. You can see more of his work at www.adamfrew.com. Adam's design has been very successful, and stocks are running low.

Limited stocks exist of all three t-shirts, so place your order before stocks run out.
Tom Hovey's t-shirts: £15.00 plus £3.00 p&p.
Breon O'Casey's t-shirts: £20.00 plus £3.00 p&p.
Adam Frew's t-shirts: £25.00 plus £3.00 p&p.
(p&p at cost only for orders of 2 or more T-shirts.)

If you would like to support Adopt a Potter by buying a t-shirt, please contact Maddy stating which t-shirt you would like to buy, the size and your address. We will confirm the price and give you our bank details and once payment has been received, we will post the t-shirt.
maddycarra@gmail.com