Cumbrian Hotel Adds Ceramics To Its Art Gallery

The ongoing success of a hotel's new art gallery installation has resulted in an expansion into the world of stoneware ceramics and sculpture.

English Lakes Hotels has commissioned British ceramics expert Jonquil Cook to feature her works in the ‘Art in the Atrium’ gallery at Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa.

The luxury spa venue has established a new display area for sculpture and ceramics to add to its ongoing art exhibits.

Jonquil’s stoneware ceramics artwork has been featured across the globe, including recent large scale tile mural installations in North America, France and now London, where she produces highly decorative pieces from the TAM studios in Woolwich Dockyard.

Working with high fired stoneware clay and using custom made slips and glazes, Jonquil produces a range of items including vases, platters, tile panels and interior murals, always with the dual aims of functionality and beauty.

Jonquil’s surface decoration is hand-carved, freehand, with detailed ‘sgraffito’, a technique adapted from relief printmaking where a layer of glaze or slip is put on a piece of pottery, dried and then expertly etched and abraded to reveal base layers of colour.

Executive chairman of English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues Simon Berry says:

“Jonquil’s signature style and method has been developed over two decades of international experiences."

“Recurrent themes appearing on the relief surface of her work, such as swimming Koi carp and natural forms of wild flowers and grasses, have come about from years of observation of the natural environment."

“Jonquil’s work is a welcome addition to Low Wood Bay’s Art in the Atrium exhibition and we hope our hotel guests will be thoroughly absorbed by her ornate and intricate pieces.”

Jonquil has strong connections with Cumbria and has been a regular exhibitor at the Potfest in the Pens event in Penrith.

“The Lake District landscape has been a huge influence on my artistic development since childhood, and has nurtured my passion for hiking and climbing,” she says. “And the opportunity to exhibit at Low Wood Bay is poignant as my mum was one of the first chamber maids at the hotel in the 1950s when there was just a skeleton staff of eight.”

All of Jonquil’s ceramics are entirely handmade and unique, with no moulds or templates used. They are fired twice in the kiln, first to just under 1,000 degrees centigrade, and then, once glazed, to 1,260 degrees. This second firing makes her products extremely strong and non-porous.