Emily Mitchell is a UK based ceramicist and artist based in Norwich. Her work grows out of an interest in everyday and historic objects to tell their own stories. As well as working in ceramics she also uses drawing, print and painting in her practice.
“I love classic fiction and often use literature as a source for ideas. I also enjoy looking at and working with museum collections and archives and I am especially interested in the idea of the ‘souvenir’ which feeds into my work in the creation of loaded objects - hand-sized and intimate. My connection with clay and ceramics began with my mother, the ceramicist Judith Onions, best known for her re-invention of the classic blue and white striped 'Cornishware' for TG Green & Co.”
Emily Mitchell’s Flora & Fauna slipware collection of flower vases and wall sconces is inspired by early English slip decoration and research into Jacobean embroidery and stump work motifs of the natural world. Each piece is handmade in terracotta and painted with layers of coloured slip before being decorated with hundreds of slip dots to create raised patterns of flora and fauna. Birds, hares and stags run around the flower vases and over the wall sconces.