How ceramicist Philip Eglin found the perfect home and studio in the Brecon Beacons

As ‘an artist who works in clay’, Philip Eglin is well versed in perseverance and patience. Both were needed in the search for the house he now shares with his wife, Jennet, and their lurcher, Ping-Pong, situated in the sheltered lea of Wales’s magnificent Brecon Beacons.

The move here, 15 years ago, marked the moment that Philip began to devote himself entirely to his art. His pieces are held in several major public collections across the world, and last year he was a finalist in the prestigious Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. For the collectors and curators who navigate the roads across the mountains, there is also his own diverse and ever-expanding archive.

The seeds of Philip’s interest in ceramics were sown during teenage visits to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and germinated at the University of Staffordshire (then Staffordshire Polytechnic) in Stoke-on-Trent.

Michael Sinclair

It was there that Philip and Jennet met, and – after Philip had completed an MA at the Royal College of Art – they stayed in the city to raise their two sons (now in their 30s). At the time, Jennet was teaching history of art and design at Hereford College of Art and Philip was teaching ceramics at the university, but ‘for the last 18 years we were there, we were looking for something here,’ he says.

When they first viewed their current home, a late-Georgian, stone-built and Grade II-listed house, ‘it was too derelict, and too small,’ explains Jennet. Years passed; Philip and Jennet had ‘almost given up looking’ when the property was again offered for sale. ‘In between, it had been bought by someone who had restored it, enlarged it, and so made it perfect for us,’ she adds. In turn, three years ago, they did something similar for Philip’s outhouse studio.  ‘It’s now lighter, warmer, and has a view.’