STEVE SMITH & TERRY HALLORAN
FREEHAND PAINTED CHINA

Steve and Terry are exceptionally talented ceramic artists with almost 80 years experience in the field between them. Having worked for many large companies in the past they decided, in late 2006, that they would work independently under their own names to revive an ancient craft.

Steve and Terry wanted to return to traditional methods where every part of the process was carried out by hand and the very highest standards of design and finish were achieved. As each piece carries a back-stamp bearing their own name they tend to be obsessive about quality.

They wanted to offer their loyal collectors a level of quality and value that large companies could not match. Freehand painted china is an ancient craft but is rarely offered today because it is so labour intensive. Because of high overheads in these companies, the artist costs might be as little as one tenth of the eventual retail price, making pieces very expensive. Designs were usually determined by cost restraints with limited subjects and very little background detail. The artist might also have to paint repetitively, and not always to the highest standard, in order to complete large editions to recoup design costs.

Steve and Terry's pieces that are painted internally as well as externally are probably unique in the thousand year history of the craft and something quite extraordinary in today's fine art market. The level of detail they achieve on the outside of a piece is probably unparalled, but it is almost certainly the first time anyone has attempted it on the INSIDE of a piece of china.

They work extremely hard and take great pride in offering the highest quality as competitively as possible. For example, their "inside-outside" prestige pieces, retailing at around £1100, may take three weeks to design and about a week to paint each one of the edition. Edition sizes are kept low (maximum 10) and their annual output is small - hence only a very small number of retailers can be supplied. Around 95% of their production for 2008 had sold by early 2009.

Steve and Terry design the shape of a piece before taking it to a local master china maker, Mark Lewis. He will turn a block of plaster into the required shape and use it to make a master mould and two working moulds.

China slip is poured into the mould and left for a matter of seconds - this critical judgement is vital as the best china is very thin and translucent. After firing, the piece of china is glazed twice and refired. Only two pieces of each shape are made in one day - hardly mass production!

The whole process requires huge care and skill. A new shape may need several trials before the exact conditions are obtained - the unfired piece is very fragile, contracts by around 14% on firing and needs to be supported in just the right way if it is not to distort. This is particulary crucial for pieces which have a round mouth, where the eye would quickly detect any imperfection.

Once the piece of white china, or glost, is in front of Steve and Terry they can begin a design. An enormous amount of time is spent working up the design as it has to fit the shape - painting in 3-D is quite different to painting a flat surface. A circular box needs four different designs to blend together, while the inside-outside pieces need a special perspective. Looking at the outside of a piece the eye sees only a part of the surface, but when you look inside you see the whole surface, so the design on the inside has to be done at a larger scale for the whole design to look right. The skill is all about making the correct judgement for the piece.

Painting miniatures is very meticulous work in itself. With china it is even harder because the enamel paints used must be applied thinly, so the image has to be built up in stages (at least three), with a firing after each stage:-

The enamel colour reacts with the glaze when it is fired so that the image becomes a permanent thin layer of "coloured glass". Colour changes also take place during firing so the artist needs a lot of experience to know how things will turn out and which colours to apply first.

Pieces receive a final firing after 24 carat gold (gilding) has been applied to provide a finish to any edges.

So Steve and Terry's beautiful masterpieces are truly works of art that will be admired for generations to come. It is hard to appreciate just how much goes into each piece - which is why Steve likens the whole creative process to "making a watch by hand"!

Eric Knowles the international ceramics expert, who knows quality when he sees it, believes this is some of the finest china available today. In the photo below he is seen examining Steve's prestige vase of Blue Tits called "Safely Home". The title of the piece stems from the scene Steve has cleverly designed for the inside - it shows the view from the inside of a nest in a tree hole, with one adult sitting on eggs as the other is seen returning through the entrance hole, with the outside world beyond. Truly incredible art!