Michelle Lowe Pottery
2026- Taking part in Potfest Scotland – Scone Palace.
Michelle Lowe makes colourful slipware pots for the kitchen and the table. She works in her garden studio by the seaside in Edinburgh. She aims to make useful and beautiful pots which encourage people to enjoy the small daily comforts of hand-crafted objects in the sharing of a pot of tea or a home cooked meal with friends and family.
Most of her work is thrown on a pottery wheel. A few pieces, like her quirky toast racks, are made by handbuilding with slabs of clay. She uses red earthenware clay which she coats in a creamy slip and then decorates with coloured slips, oxides and glazes.
She loves the warmth and softness of red earthenware and the rich decorative possibilities of sgraffito, brushing and trailing coloured slips. Many of her pieces are decorated with the humble hedgerow plants which brighten our days and herald the changing of seasons.
These popular plants and berries evoke for Michelle the nostalgic, simple pleasures of connection to nature and growing, cooking, foraging and preserving food.
She also has other ranges which depicts lively illustrations of beloved pot collections and simple pleasures including wild swimming and cycling.
Michelle came to ceramics by a round-about route via a background in Social Anthropology and a decade working for human rights and social justice charities. In 2006-9 she trained as an assistant to Bärbel Dister at Cromarty Pottery in the Scottish Highlands. Michelle then established her own studio in Edinburgh.