The Henry Hammond Lecture Series began in 2016 after the Henry Hammond Trust wound down and donated its remaining funds to the CSC to support an annual lecture.
The series honours Henry Hammond (1914-1989) a ceramic artist, educator and researcher, who led the ceramics course at the West Surrey College of Art and Design from 1946-1980, playing a key role in a buoyant period of ceramic education and practice in Farnham. He was awarded an MBE for service to ceramic education in 1980 and was a founder Trustee of the CSC when it formed as a charity in 1970.
Speakers include key figures who in different ways share Hammond’s commitment to ceramics education, research and practice.
PREVIOUS LECTURES
10 October 2025
THE ENDURING LEGACY OF LADI KWALI, Dr Jareh Das
Independent curator, scholar and researcher Jareh Das delivers the 2025 lecture, reflecting on the remarkable life and artistic legacy of Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925–1984), Nigeria’s most celebrated potter, whose mastery of Indigenous Gbari hand-building techniques shaped a pioneering transnational ceramic practice. Drawing on oral histories, archival photographs, and field research in Kwali and Suleja, Dr Jareh Das explores how Kwali’s waterpots, once everyday vessels, became icons of artistic innovation and cultural heritage in Nigeria and beyond. Held at the Farnham Town Hall as part of Farnham Craft Month 2025.
18 October 2024
OBSOLESCENCE AND RENEWAL, Professor Neil Brownsword
For nearly three decades Neil Brownsword has explored marginalised histories associated with ceramic manufacture in North Staffordshire, focusing primarily on the impact of globalisation in recent decades upon people, place and traditional skills. His reactivation of endangered industrial crafts has achieved impact internationally via curated projects and cross-cultural exchange. Held at the Farnham Maltings as part of Farnham Craft Month 2024.
11 March 2020
Sarah Radstone
Artist and educator Sarah Radstone gives an account of Henry Hammond who was Head of Ceramics at the West Surrey College of Art and Design from 1946-1980. Radstone was part of an illustrious cohort of students in the 1970s at the Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, including Julian Stair and Henry Pim, and has subsequently taught in the USA and on the Diploma Course at the City Lit for over 20 years. Her first major retrospective exhibition was held at CoCA, York Art Gallery in 2018 and revealed ‘an uncanny cross fertilisation between ceramics, history and many other disciplines’. Held at the CSC/UCA.
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7 March 2019
FEWER BETTER THINGS, Glenn Adamson
Reknowned author, curator and researcher Glenn Adamson discusses his most recent publication Fewer Better Things (Bloomsbury, 2019) using case studies of everyday pottery. Ceramics, a medium intrinsically connected to the earth, is among our oldest repositories of human ingenuity and remains an artistically and technologically active field to this day. Acknowledging and exploring the material richness of ceramics enables us to cultivate a ‘material intelligence’ in an environment where are are at risk of quite literally losing touch with the things in our lives. Held at the Royal College of Art, London.
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12 October 2016
THE MYSTERIOUS IUOHAN OF SAINT PETERSBURG, Professor Nigel Wood
The inaugural Henry Hammond was given by the ceramic historian, potter, and former student of Henry Hammond, Nigel Wood. The lecture included reflections on Hammond’s contribution to ceramic education and studio pottery, and a case study of Wood’s own research with the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg on a life-sized glazed ceramic luohan from Yixian in Hebei.
