Jennie McCall

What Makes Jennie McCall's Work Unique

Jennie's practice is defined by an extraordinary sensitivity to material and memory. Working primarily with stoneware and porcelain, often combining the two to achieve both structural strength and delicate translucency, she builds each piece through hand-building techniques, layering oxides and glazes across multiple firings to create surfaces of remarkable depth and complexity. The result is work that feels shaped as much by elemental forces as by the artist's hand.

Her coastal vessel forms, named after specific beaches along the Scottish Borders and Northumberland shoreline, are perhaps the most striking expression of this approach. Pieces like Cocklawburn Beach and Coldingham Bay translate the geological character of each location into sculptural form: the stratified textures of sandstone, the tonal shifts of wet sand meeting rock, the traces left by retreating tides. Some vessels carry warm ochres and raw earth tones that speak of sun-warmed stone; others bear cool turquoise glazes that evoke the meeting point of sky and sea. Each is unmistakably connected to a real place, yet each transcends literal representation to become something more contemplative, a meditation on landscape and the way it shapes us.

Alongside these landscape-inspired forms, Jennie's figurative sculptures reveal a different facet of her creative vision. Her pangolins, seahorses, and whales draw on folklore and mythology, subjects that have fascinated her since childhood in the Scottish Borders. The Large Pangolin, with its meticulously carved scales curling into a protective sphere, demonstrates the extraordinary patience and precision of her hand-building technique. Meanwhile, pieces like the Golden (blue) Whale, finished with lustrous gold leaf and subtle patina, bring an almost mythical presence, as though these creatures have surfaced from some ancient story half-remembered.

Jennie's journey to ceramics was itself a creative evolution. After earning a BA (Hons) in Graphic Design and establishing an award-winning career as an illustrator, including the Royal Society of Arts Design Award and the Jacobs Memorial Award, she gradually returned to the three-dimensional making that had always called to her. Over two decades of dedicated ceramic practice, she has developed a distinctive approach that weaves together her illustrator's eye for detail, her deep connection to the Scottish landscape, and her enduring fascination with the stories embedded in the natural world.

"Jennie's work captures something essential about the relationship between memory and landscape. Her coastal vessels are not representations of places, they are distillations of the experience of being in those places, carrying the textures, colours, and quiet emotional weight of Scotland's shorelines into forms you can live with daily."