The Old Bakery, Whitstable
Keith's seaside studio for twenty years
Keith and Marj are back from their visit to China and then Australia, and taking a few days to rest, work out what the time actually is, and which way is up.
While we’ve got some exciting news coming your way (watch your inbox on 30th April is all we can say!), today we’re looking at a bit of Keith Brymer Jones history.
Whitstable is a small town on the North Kent coast, eight kilometres from Canterbury and facing out onto the Thames Estuary. The Romans knew it as a place to find good Oysters, and in medieval times it was the centre of the copperas industry - a mineral used in fabric dye and printing ink. In 1830, it became the destination for the world's first entirely steam-hauled railway service, run by the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway Company.
But most importantly (no, really!), since 2004, it’s also been where Keith has his studio, the one pictured on the cover of Boy In A China Shop.
Keith remembers:
“I had ‘discovered’ Whitstable way back in the days when I was delivering parcels… One happy Friday afternoon I found myself driving down the A2 to this -sleepy-cum-rough-round-the-edges harbour town. It appealed to me straight away with its air of a bygone, industrial past and its feeling of space and air.”
Keith found his new workshop after spotting a card in a window on Whitstable High Street, advertising cheap studio space. Keith visited and was shown a space full from bottom-to-top with old junk. The Old Bakery had two floors with a mezzanine on the second floor, and a range of rooms off to one side. It wasn’t clear whether the man occupying it was running a business, or just had a serious collecting habit.
In any case, Keith agreed to rent it - only to find, that man wasn’t the owner. Luckily, the actual landlord “said I could have the lease for as long as I wanted. I almost jumped up and down. I may have cried.”
Keith left his old pottery in Highgate, London and moved to Whitstable, “almost entirely under my own steam, and it nearly killed me.” His workshop has been downstairs with offices above ever since.
It’s here that he throws regularly - if you’ve bought a handmade mug on the Life, Clay and Everything tour or an Absent Tribe beaker from the British Ceramics Biennial, they were made here. Keith uses both a JW Ratcliffe & Co and a Shimpo wheel, and two Kilns & Furnaces Ltd, Made-in-Tunstall kilns.
And it’s a place many of you may have visited, as it’s been open for annual studio sales most years, too. But after 20 years in Whitstable, everything is about to change … and there will be more about that soon. Like we said, watch your inbox.
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