Philip Eglin

How would you describe your work in three words?
Reverent, eclectic, referential. 

When did you first discover clay? What drew you to ceramics? 
My first experience with clay was during my first year at a comprehensive school and I hated it! The most exciting thing I learnt to make (from fellow pupils) was a water bomb, which consisted of joining two pinch pots together, creating a hole in which to pour water and then sealing it over to trap the water inside. These could then be dropped from a height onto the heads of poor unsuspecting fellow pupils below! I didn't have access to clay again until I enrolled on a foundation art course and it was fortuitous that ceramics was being taught as part of the course. I learnt the rudiments of throwing and hand building and discovered exciting ways of applying surface imagery to clay slabs and this was the start of my journey with clay. 

Your work encompasses a wide range of references from history and contemporary culture. What tensions or conversations are you hoping to create through these juxtapositions?
I have always been interested in making work that re-visits and connects ideas from the past with the present. I remember admiring an illustration of the English blue and white ’willow pattern’ on the cover of a Sunday magazine supplement, during the period when Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese by the then governor Chris Patten. I really liked the inventive way that the two love birds had been substituted with commercial aircrafts, the pagodas with skyscrapers and the limousines parked, waiting to take the governor off to the airport! I have continued in this vein exploring the mixing of works from the past, re-interpreting and updating for the present.

Your 'Bucket' works are characterised by your signature combination of painting and transfer work. You call upon a variety of expressions from the abstract to the figurative. Where does your imagery come from and what is the technical process behind these works? 
Images come from a variety of sources. I have used commissioned line drawings carried out by my two sons (when they were young) of religious paintings by Lucas Cranach. I have been influenced by the work of Picasso, Cy Twombly, Roger Hilton, Howard Hodgkin and Rauschenberg to name but a few. I have also made drawings from photographic images sourced via eBay and the internet of subjects as diverse as Catholic priests, pin-ups and footballers. I have employed a combination and a layering of ceramic techniques to put these images onto plastic, leather-hard, bisque-fired and glaze-fired clay surfaces via coloured slips, glazes and silk screened transfer print. 

Ceramics carries a strong sense of place and history, particularly in Britain. How has working with specific collections, regions, or ceramic histories influenced your practice?
I first got to handle some historical ceramics in the form of English medieval jugs in the storerooms of the Museum of London while I was a student at the RCA. Holding these first pots was a transformative experience and a huge impact and influence on my practice. Through handling, I got a valuable insight into the way these jugs had been made and a true understanding of their weight, thickness and feel and importantly a real sense of a connection with their original makers. I have taken every opportunity to handle works first hand and have even bought a number of historical ceramic pieces at auction in order to live with these objects and further my understanding of the way they have been made to inform my own making.

Your series of small jug forms are informed by your longstanding interest in English medieval ceramics. What is it about ceramics from this period that continues to hold your attention?
My interest in English medieval ceramics was initially sparked by a visit to view the ceramics collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It was here that I first saw some examples of English medieval jugs. I loved the honesty and directness of their thrown forms and was interested to discover that they were often influenced by contemporary, more expensive metal forms. In making my own small versions, inspired by the spirit of these historical examples, I did a kind of flip, utilising details found on cheap, contemporary, throwaway packaging to produce a number of pressed and hand built jug forms.

There’s often humour or a sense of mischief in your work, even when you’re dealing with serious or historic references. What role does humour play in how you think about authority, tradition, and reverence within your practice?
I have always had a healthy disrespect for authority and I see it as a British cultural trait to use humour to tackle dark subjects. In my series of irreverent popes with which I was making a commentary on the child sexual abuses within the Catholic church, I deliberately and intentionally employed flippant and veiled anagrams of their true titles.  So for example the title I Spy Stippled Arsehole is an anagram of Sly Paedophile Priests and A Hot Piped Peephole with the letters rearranged becomes The Paedophile Pope. 

Looking back over the last forty years of your practice, how has your relationship to ceramics changed? Has the material surprised you or resisted you in unexpected ways? 
Clay is a very special kind of material and one that I have had a love/hate relationship with over the last forty years of my practice. It can be totally frustrating at one end and totally magical at the other. There are no real corners that can be cut and it is very much about learning through doing and experience only comes with time, taking risks and pushing to the limits of what is possible. Mistakes and disasters are a very necessary and important part of the journey and it takes time to develop an affinity and a facility with clay as a making material. The knowledge and experience I've gained through time have allowed for an increasingly ambitious approach to my ideas and making.

You were shortlisted for the prestigious Loewe Craft Prize in 2025. How do you navigate the dialogue between craft and art in relation to ceramics, and more specifically in relation to your own practice?
I feel the word craft is very much bound up and synonymous with skill. Craft me for suggests something that is both material and skill-led whereas art is very much about the communication of ideas. There is a bit of a conundrum with ceramics as the more extensive one’s knowledge, understanding and experience of clay as a material, the more ambitious it is possible to be.  

‘Bucket List’ is your first exhibition in London since 2020, and it brings together works which were made between 2007 and 2025. The title is a reference to a previous show which took place in 2016 at Marsden Woo Gallery titled ‘Kick the Bucket’. How does it feel to see these works presented together?
‘Kick the Bucket’ was a deliberately flippant title – the phrase originated in the 16th century and related to suicide, standing on a bucket with a noose around one’s neck and at a moment of choosing, kicking it away! I first used the word bucket in place of the often used, naff nineties title ‘untitled vessel’, for my cylindrical pot forms. A ‘Bucket List’ is a collection of experiences, achievements, and goals someone wants to accomplish in their lifetime, often before they ‘kick the bucket’ so an apt title given that I recently qualified to receive my government state pension! While this exhibition does not feature my three-dimensional, figurative sculptures, I am thrilled to present for the first time as a cohesive group, a collection of vessel-based forms spanning the past 18 years of my practice.

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