Tucked beside the garden at Whichford Pottery, The Octagon Gallery is a stunning showcase of the best in hand-made British ceramics. It also has a unique selection of other well-made British crafts, paintings, textiles, garden tools and more. The iconic octagonal building gives a great feeling of space and peacefulness.
Whichford Pottery was established in 1976 by Jim Keeling, who now heads a highly-skilled team of 25. It is a family run business making a unique range of hand-made frostproof flowerpots using traditional methods. We employ and train local people wherever possible and have a thriving apprenticeship scheme.
Many years ago Jim and his wife Dominique started making their own distinctive glazed sgraffito domestic-ware. This meant we needed somewhere to display it, so our first gallery was a gazebo in the stock area. As time went by we created a small shop in our courtyard garden selling good ceramics and British crafts.
We have always been passionate about the survival of craftsmanship and although we appeared to be a lone voice at that time, our ethos and resolve did not waver even though there was fierce competition (on price not quality!) from imported goods. We were finding more and more talented artisans whose work we wanted to display and, of course, sell, but we had limited space.
Jim and Dominique have five children and their eldest son Adam, a talented potter, joined the pottery team in 2002. In 2007 Adam broke his arm on a skiing holiday with his dad! This meant he joined the office team for a few months and he began to investigate the idea of a purpose built gallery. With an iconic design and planning permission in place, Adam spearheaded the DEFRA application for matched funding, which was successful and, with a leap of faith, Jim cashed in his pension and the building work on The Octagon began.
Building The Octagon
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