Ceramics can be both a solitary pursuit and a gateway to community, a duality Edmund Davies deeply values about the craft. “I'm a reasonably extroverted person, but it's also nice to have my own space to retreat to,” he says. Since opening the doors to Helgate Pottery in Norwich, he is learning to balance these moments of quiet concentration with connected experiences. “Sitting side by side at the wheel, people end up sharing quite honest conversations that they wouldn't necessarily have face-to-face. It gives them a place to open up.”
In this cherished community studio, Edmund offers classes much like those he enrolled in after graduating with an architecture degree. At the time, pottery offered him a more intimate form of creativity than the one he had formally pursued. “There is something nicely singular about making a pot. You can make all the decisions and finish it in an afternoon,” he says, in contrast to designing a building, where a team of people has input and a project takes years to come to fruition. “Really, it was an immediate thing. I started throwing on the wheel, and I was hooked.”
He joined a shared-access studio in East London, where he developed his practice over the following years while working in hospitality. His relationship with the wheel grew steadily, shaped by humbling setbacks alongside reassuring signs of progress. “There’s an incremental growth and development to it, until you finally get to a point where you feel somewhat in control. It’s intuitive but difficult, and there’s always a next stage.” Then came the pandemic, which led Edmund and his partner to relocate to Norwich. “We didn't think it through that much, but it was one of the best decisions of my life.”
Norwich offered a more affordable quality of life, easing some of the pressures that came with pursuing a creative path while living in London. An opportunity arose for him and his partner to purchase a row of garages on the west side of the city, tucked behind Norwich Arts Centre. The unassuming, timber-built building lived many lives before being transformed into Helgate Pottery. “Somebody once told me that their mother used to pickle eggs in it in the seventies,” Edmund laughs. “That might be my favourite fact about it.” They have since acquired an adjacent sixteenth-century shopfront, firmly situating themselves in the heart of Norwich’s creative community.
Helgate hosts classes at various levels and workshops with established potters – including TOAST collaborator Lily Pearmain and, of course, Edmund himself. Keen ceramicists can also sign up for a membership and spend dedicated time at the pottery each week. “Having a space that’s animated by people coming through it, especially in a city the size of Norwich, is really enriching,” Edmund says. He runs his own practice among members, but is in the process of setting up an adjacent private studio where he can fully immerse himself in the craft – and make as much mess as he likes. “When there are twelve or so people in the space, I can’t really have boards full of mugs and bowls getting in people’s way. Sadly, I’m not fundamentally a tidy person, so in my own space I can let it build up.”
Edmund has created a series of mugs for our Autumn Winter 2026 collection, each decorated with a checkerboard pattern. The effect is created using a wax-resist technique, which involves applying wax to certain areas of the mug to prevent the glaze from adhering. When the mug comes out of the kiln, those areas remain unglazed, revealing patches of raw clay underneath.
“It’s a design I started exploring a year or so ago, but the more I’ve worked with it, the better I’ve become at making it,” he explains. In the early stages, the form gradually took shape – a subtly flared rim here, a different approach to glazing there. The version in our shops reflects that ongoing process of refinement, which, for a potter, never truly ends. This open-endedness carries through to each mug’s form and surface. “Every brush mark is done individually,” Edmund adds, “so each of them has that almost woven quality that shifts from one mug to the next… it gives the sense that this is a unique object, which I think people really respond to.”
Discover the Edmund Davies Checkerboard Mug.
Words by Bébhinn Campbell.
Photography by Aloha Bonser-Shaw.
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