Twisting Tradition: Medieval Cats, Dead Dad Pots and the Ceramics of Vicky Lindo & Bill Brookes

Step inside the side-by-side studios of Vicky Lindo and Bill Brookes, two ceramic artists who reinvent traditional Devonshire pottery to combine a childlike love of animals, with powerful personal history.

Finding out about her father’s death several years after it happened, Lindo, her sisters and mum kept a diary filled with photos, newspaper cuttings, handwritten notes and memories, piecing together his life and death. They called this the ‘Dead Dad Book’, and it inspired Vicky to make a deeply personal series of pots recounting different elements of his story.

Watch as the earthenware pieces are slip-cast (liquid clay carefully poured into a plaster mould) by Brookes, and then delivered to Lindo next door where she painstakingly applies the rich decoration and narrative using the technique of sgraffito (scratching through the surface layer of colour, revealing the white clay underneath).