School of Art

Contact Details

School of Art
Aberystwyth University
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1NG

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622460

Fax: +44 (0)1970 622461

Email: artschool@aber.ac.uk


Display artist/maker:

Peter Hayes

Born: 1946, UK, England, Birmingham

Ceramicist. Hayes studied at the Mosely School of Art in Birmingham and then the Bimringham College of Art (1960-67). He worked with his father in the printmaking business briefly before moving to Cornwall in the hope of joining an artistic community in St Ives, though he ended up settling in St Mawes.

In 1972 he was invited to South Africa where he spent ten years, initially as a Craft Advisor in Lesotho, working with the local Basotho community. Here he came to admire their unique way of burnishing pots using a polished river pebble and firing the pots upside-down with dry cow dung under corrugated metal and flattened oil drums. The firing lasts between three and four hours and reaches around 600°C.

Hayes developed this technique and adapted a gas-fired kiln where each piece of work is placed very close but without touching, and a long, slow flame is allowed to lick around the piece to give a very dark, burnished red appearance.

Hayes has also worked as an Advisor for the Development of Ceramics in 1984 for the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation for Nepal, India, Japan, and South Korea, and as Craft Advisor South West Arts from 1985-87. In 2009 he was a demonstrator at the International Ceramics Festival in Aberystwyth. The piece purchased for the collection was inspired by his 2009 travels in Australia. Hayes currently resides and works in Bath.

Objects in the collections associated with this artist/maker

Porcelain Blade C1622 Ceramics




 
Gweinyddu