Josie Walter

Josie enrolled on the Studio Ceramics course at Chesterfield College of Art. After three years of throwing, building kilns, visiting potters and generally being immersed in pottery, She opened a workshop in Matlock with a fellow student at Chesterfield, John Gibson.

Josie soon realised that she needed further experience in production throwing and running a business, so spotting an advert in Ceramic Review magazine, she applied for a job working for Suzie and Nigel Atkins at the Poterie du Don in the Auvergne, France. Josie worked at Le Don as an apprentice for 6 months in 1980 making salt glazed domestic ware, then returned to the workshop in Matlock where she made once fired decorated earthenware pottery.

When the lease ran out on the Matlock workshop, John and his wife Judy moved with their son John Morgan to the island of Bornholm in Denmark, while Josie relocated to a workshop three miles up the road in Cromford, where she made pots for the next 10 years. Now Josie is happily installed in a workshop that she had built in the garden at home.