All shapes and sizes from the urban potters

London is a city built on clay and a meandering river runs through it. What better place for making mud pies and, by extension, pots? Potters have been here since long before King Lud's time. But that doesn't explain how London has become a major hub of contemporary ceramic art.

Studio Pottery is the proper name for this type of work, shown at Biennales and Trienniales and collected by a passionate and growing number of admirers and museums.

Studio Pottery is distinct from craft pottery or even the Bernard Leach style of country pottery.

What we're dealing with is more urban — it's work that might share discourse with Picasso's pottery, with contemporary art installations or the silent mysteries of ancient Asian vessels.

The creators of Studio Pottery can be found in the most Dickensian corners of London: blackened mews with rotting cobbles underfoot, leaking railway arches where only the intrepid dare to tread. But turn the corner into their studios and you'll often find a magical, Zen-like environment.

In such a place I found Edmund de Waal, a leading ceramic artist shown at Alan Cristea Gallery and distinguished writer. His studio has a superb library, and was designed by the Stirling
Prize-nominated DSDHA Architects.

Not far from him in East Dulwich is Julian Stair RA. His exquisitely textured pieces have been chosen to represent Britain at the Trienniale of Ceramics & Glass in Belgium and specialist dealer Adrian Sassoon shows them at places such as the pavilion in Berkeley Square.

Nicholas Rena, an exciting sculptor working in clay who has been shown at the Musée des Arts Deco in Paris and at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, works along the Thames at Fulham. His bold modernist colours and majestic shapes look ceremonial — a distilled religious architecture in vessel form. Earlier this year Marsdon Woo Gallery mounted a sellout show of his work alongside paintings by Matthew Smith.

Then, in Vanguard Court in Camberwell, a shared studio space houses Catrin Howell (shown at the V&A), Chris Keenan (commissioned by Habitat), Robert Cooper, Annie Turner, Merete Rasmussen, Carina Ciscato, Alex Hagen and Sun Kim. They are all serious talents and many began as apprentices to Edmund de Waal or Julian Stair.

"One of the reasons London has such a flourishing tradition of contemporary ceramics," says Ben Williams at Phillips de Pury, "is the strong courses at the Royal College and Camberwell."

Thus Dame Lucie Rie (who had a pottery in a mews off Hyde Park), Martin Smith and others, came to live, tutor and work near the schools.

There are a number of specialist London galleries who attract more potters to live and work nearby. There's Vessel in Notting Hill, Galerie Besson in Bond Street's Royal Arcade, Joanna Bird Pottery in Chiswick, and Marsden Woo in Clerkenwell. Even at Fortnum & Mason you can find pots by Helen Beard decorated with seriously good line drawings — fluid figurative sketches glazed into simple clay vessels.