A disobedient cat was stealthily approaching a piece of homemade cake on John and Jude Jelfs’s kitchen table, only to be caught in the act and ordered off. Not only was the cake homemade, so was the plate on which it was sitting, for John and Jude have been professional potters all their working lives.

“I studied sculpture at college, and I’d always worked with clay in the course of that,” Jude explained. “Then I met John, who was already a potter, and we got married. We set up a workshop together, so I became a potter out of economic necessity!”

“I was doing A-level art, and that’s how I came across pottery,” John added. “But I had no intention of actually becoming a potter — I was doing four A-levels, and I thought art would be the easy option. But in the end it completely changed the direction of my life. I’d been a marine engineer, but I decided that life at sea wasn’t for me. So I decided to start again, and went back to college.”

From front cover Where other people might have a lawn in their back garden, John and Jude have a kiln to fire their pots — they’d just built a new one when I visited.

Also on site at their Bourton-on-the-Water home is a shop selling their pottery — including something distinctly different: ceramic sculptured profiles of rather ample ladies. With much laughter, Jude told me how they came about.

“I was never very good at throwing pots on the wheel, although I did it for years. We were bringing up a family, and when they grew up, I had a yearning to get back to something that was a bit more like what I’d been doing before — something more sculptural. So I started flattening the pots I was throwing, and they got flatter and flatter.

“I can’t really remember how the female form emerged, but the human figure has always interested me, I’ve always done a lot of life drawing. The idea of the pots becoming drawings in space was always where it was going to go.”

Jude is currently the organiser of the annual Oxford Ceramics Fair. It’s a big job — now in its 11th year, the fair showcases the work of some 60 of the UK’s top potters and ceramic makers, plus a few exhibitors from overseas. It also includes a programme of masterclasses and lectures.

“Anything made in fired earth is covered by the word ‘ceramics’,” John explained. “There are so many disciplines now in this country. There’s low-temperature work like raku, which is the way Japanese tea ceremony bowls are made: the potters get together, make the pots, fire them instantly, then drink tea from them the same afternoon. Then there’s earthenware, porcelain stoneware, there’s a whole spectrum.”

“The criteria for the Oxford Ceramics Fair is that it’s handmade, it’s studio pottery, as opposed to being made in a factory,” Jude added. “The pick of British ceramics are now brought to Oxford. We’re both members of the Craft Potters Association: it’s quite difficult to become a member, the council has to vet your work. We usually get twice the number of people applying as we can accept, even from within our own membership. So the standard is high.”

But doesn’t the selection process lead to letters and emails saying: “I really can’t understand why you haven’t accepted my work”?

“That used to happen in the early days. But I can honestly say that in the last six or seven years we haven’t had a single complaint — no, actually we did: someone we call ‘Old Troublesome’ complained the year before last!

“If we get applications from young people, it’s really nice: unless their work is really awful, they usually get in, it’s really important to encourage them.”

“We do rotate people as well,” John added. “We rest people if they’ve maybe shown for three or four years.

“We like diversity: it’s good to feel that if you gave each of the 60 exhibitors a bowl of clay, you’d end up with 60 different pieces of work.”

The Oxford Ceramics Fair is at St Edward’s School, Woodstock Road, on Saturday, October 30 and Sunday 31. Full details online at oxfordsc.co.uk