About Katja
Katja Seaton Ceramics
I make ceramic vessels and sculptural forms using techniques drawn from piped buttercream, translated into clay.
My work is built through hand-building, mould-making and slip casting, with surfaces developed slowly through piping and repetition. Layer by layer, I build intricate, highly detailed forms where texture and colour sit at the centre.
Before moving into ceramics, I spent over 25 years as a cake decorator, working extensively with piped buttercream. That experience continues to shape how I work — through rhythm, control and a close attention to surface.
The work is often celebratory, decorative and sometimes playful at first glance, but it holds a quieter narrative. I’m drawn to overlooked aspects of the natural world — small creatures and fragile structures — and to the way they echo how certain lives are dismissed or ignored.
I see my practice as an ongoing process, building on years of making while continuing to experiment with new materials, including silicone, and new ways of working
Biography
I am a ceramic artist based in Hastings, East Sussex. I studied ceramics and metalwork at Camberwell College of Arts before moving to New York, where I apprenticed at the Cupcake Café, training in the precise and disciplined craft of piping.
For over 25 years, I worked as a cake designer, developing a highly refined decorative language rooted in repetition, control and ornament. That training continues to inform my practice, but I now work within a slower, more considered framework — one that allows space for reflection, narrative and the development of ideas over time.
I later completed an MA in Textile Design at the University of Brighton, where I expanded my material approach, working with silicone and exploring decorative processes within a broader sculptural context.
My current work brings these strands together through ceramics, combining hand-built processes, mould-making and slip casting with piping-derived techniques. It is grounded in craftsmanship and driven by a commitment to beauty, while resisting purely decorative resolution. Surfaces draw the viewer in through intricacy and familiarity, but hold a quieter sense of tension beneath.
I use my practice as a form of dialogue. The work operates as a quiet protest, shaped by an awareness of how easily voices are overlooked, dismissed or contained. These concerns are embedded within the work rather than stated, held in the space between attraction and unease.
Practice & Process
I work primarily with hand-built clay, using coiling, piping and sculptural construction to develop form. Surfaces are built through repetition and accumulation, allowing texture to emerge gradually and assert its own presence.
Colour is central to the work, applied in layered underglazes, glazes and oxides. These settle into the surface, creating depth, variation and a shifting intensity that reveals itself over time.
My background in cake decoration informs both process and precision. Piped and layered elements translate into clay as structures that gather and spread across the form, suggesting forms of growth that move between ornament and quiet disquiet.
I am extending the practice to incorporate materials and processes developed during my MA, including silicone and other non-traditional approaches. This expansion allows the work to move beyond ceramics, introducing new tensions between surface, structure and material.
Artist Statement
I am a ceramic artist working with ornament, surface, and colour to create sculptural vessels that move between celebration and quiet reflection. My practice is rooted in a long engagement with decorative making, particularly the language of piped buttercream, which I translate into clay through processes of layering, repetition, and accumulation.
I am drawn to glamour, colour, and visual excess — strategies used in both nature and craft to attract attention. In my work, beauty acts as an entry point, inviting close looking. From a distance, the pieces appear celebratory and decorative, but closer observation reveals more complex narratives beneath the surface.
Central to my practice is an attention to “little lives”: small creatures, overlooked plant forms, and marginal presences that exist at the edges of human attention. I am interested in the parallels between these forms and the way certain people within society are also rendered invisible, undervalued or dismissed. Whether animal, plant or human, these lives exist within systems of attention that determine what is seen and what is ignored.
Through hand-building, mould-making, slip casting, and the repetitive process of piping, I construct layered ceramic forms where ornament accumulates over time. These surfaces hold both precision and unpredictability, echoing natural processes of growth, decay and persistence.
While the work is visually rich and often playful, it is also concerned with recognition and care. I see the vessels as quiet gestures of attention — inviting a slowing of perception and a reconsideration of what is usually overlooked.
Exhibitions
Katja’s work has been exhibited in galleries and exhibition spaces across Sussex and the South East. Recent exhibitions include Efflorescence at the Marine Workshops BN9 Studio in Newhaven (2026), Rye Art Gallery, and the Observer Building in Hastings (2024).
Exhibiting in these spaces has provided opportunities to present the work alongside other artists and to engage directly with visitors. Conversations with audiences form an important part of the process, offering moments to share the ideas and observations that inform the work.
Other notable past exhibitions include-
2026- Rosa Botanical Art Fair , West Dean College Chichester
2026 -Net Shop Gallery Space , The Yard Hastings,
2026 - Efflorescence BN9 Studio, Newhaven
2025 - Artist Residency and Exhibition, Lury, Hastings (Michelin Guide listed)
2025 - HAF Summer Members Show, Hastings
2024 - Duality Sussex Open Contemporary, The Marine Workshops, Newhaven
2024 - Art in The Dock, Artwave Festival, Firle, East Sussex
2024 - We Are Family, Electro Studios Project Space, St Leonards
2024 - Conception, Observer Building Hastings
2023 - An Other Exhibition In A Different Building, 40 Norman Rd, St Leonards
2020 - MA Textiles Graduation Show University of Brighton
2009 - One and Other, 4th Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London
2005 - Stockport College Staff exhibition, Stockport Art Gallery, Stockport
1996 - BA Joint Honours Ceramics and Metalwork Graduation Show Camberwell School of Art
Open Studios / Events
2025 - Coastal Currents Open Studios Hastings
2024 - Coastal Currents Open Studios Hastings
Inspired by nature's quiet persistence
Katja studied Ceramics and Metalwork at Camberwell School of Art, London (1996) before moving to New York, where she refined her skills in painting and sculpture at the Art Students League, Manhattan (1998). During this time, she worked at The Cupcake Café, mastering the art of piping and intricate decoration a technique that continues to shape her ceramic work today.
Katja also taught Art at colleges in the North West and the South East. Her creative exploration led her to an MA in Textiles at the University of Brighton (2020), where she experimented with silicone, mould-making, and casting. This process ultimately brought her back to ceramics.
"Each piece is a journey, a reflection of nature's delicate balance and the beauty in imperfection."
Leah Hannon
C.V.
Education
MA Textile Design, University of Brighton — Merit, 2020
Certificate in Education, UCLAN, 2004
BA (Hons) Visual Arts (Ceramics & Metalwork) Camberwell School of Art, 1996
Access to Art & Design, College of North West London, 1992
Awards & Recognition
Great Taste Award - Gold
Cake International - Silver
Northwest Fine Foods- Heart of Excellence
The Big Draw – Whatmore Trust Award
Professional Practice
Founder & Ceramic Artist — Katja Seaton Ceramics, Hastings (2023–present)