The ceramic artwork of Lorna Hitchens has previously been concerned with large hand built and smoothed sculptural forms in white stoneware with rough textured inlaid coloured clays and base materials. These have been purchased and displayed as both garden sculpture and interior studio ceramics.

Lorna’s latest work has focused more on functional vessels which are coil- built and wheel- thrown wares and which were initiated through her investigation into the traditions of the Japanese Tea Ceremony for which she has a spiritual and aesthetic appreciation. This fascination resulted in the creation of a series of original and beautiful Tea Bowls. The formulation of Lorna’s glazes and surface treatments result from on-going trials and experimentations with raw materials giving her an expanding reference library of colours and textural combinations.  These influences have naturally flowed into her current work, The Wye Valley Vessels which focus on a series of vessels in white stoneware and porcelain and whose surface treatments undeniably reflect Lorna’s observational abstractions of the hills, meadows and river of the Wye Valley landscape where she lives.

​