Chloë Dowds

Chloë Dowds completed a BA in Fine Art (Ceramics) at GMIT in 2008, an MA in History of Art & Architecture at the University of Limerick in 2012, DCCOI’s Ceramics Skills & Design course in 2014, and a Postgrad Cert in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at TCD in 2020. She works in Wicklow, where she makes tactile porcelain tableware and vessels.

She has been working with porcelain for about nine years, throwing tactile contemporary porcelain tableware and branching out into making more explorative and experimental pieces. Recently, she has been developing new work with hand-dyed and thrown porcelain. These vessels are heavily influenced by colour theory, especially the work of Josef Albers. Their forms are very simple, with the exterior of the vessel left unglazed so that there are no reflections off the coloured surface. The interaction between the vessels is achieved through a fine inlaid line of coloured slip inside and outside each piece, giving the illusion that the colour cuts right through. The different shades of porcelain are dyed by hand in her studio; a laborious and physical task. The simplicity of the finished forms makes the work look clean and elegant, but paradoxically this belies the difficulty inherent in achieving this finish with thrown porcelain.

Chloë Dowds applied for a Golden Fleece Award to purchase her own kiln with sliding floor. This would allow her to pack larger, more experimental works from three sides, and lessen her reliance on the shared studio kiln she currently uses.