Jennifer Alford
Artist | Potter
“Neumes” – signs and symbols used in early musical notation.
I experience textures and patterns with heightened sensitivity.
My approach begins with close observation of the Scottish coastline and land through photography and sketching, paying attention to small geological details such as erosion patterns, sedimentary layering, shells and rocks. This process helps me build an intimate and evolving dialogue between ceramics and environment which informs my glaze palette, influences my forms, and widens my understanding of how place can be held within material.
In this way, my ceramic practice becomes a form of mapping—a way of recording and honouring the textures, colours, and stories of the land.
At the wheel I draw on my musical background using rhythm, variation and chance to guide the final form. Porcelain’s intrinsic surface characteristics offers a blank canvas for a series of improvised motifs and symbols reflecting a journey from the source to the surface of the final vessel.
Biography
Jennifer Alford is an award-winning Irish artist based in North East Scotland. She trained at the Craft Council of Ireland’s renowned Ceramics Skills and Design Course in Thomastown, a programme known for its rigorous grounding in production pottery. There she gained the technical expertise that allows her to experiment freely at the wheel.
Raised in Dublin, she studied violin at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and University College Dublin. For years, music provided her principal form of expression, teaching her discipline and the balance between structure and improvisation. That sensibility underpins her relationship with clay.
