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After years spent studying, working, and living in Cardiff, Wicklow, Dublin and Graiguenamanagh, Babs Belshaw returned home to her parents' Georgian family home near Coleraine, where she spent the pandemic transforming the disused 200-year-old outhouses into a light-filled workspace and shop.
In November 2020, she launched Blackheath Pottery in a studio next door to Blackheath House, an elegant country home built in 1791 by Lord Bristol, the same earl bishop who built the nearby Mussenden Temple perched above Downhill beach.
The studio features a large glass-fronted window where visitors to the shop can watch Babs at work on the wheel, creating her handmade ceramic tableware in forest green, powder pink, and duck-egg blue tones.
"I create handmade porcelain tableware, traditional items such as mugs, bowls and plates, glazed in fresh contemporary colours," Babs says. "Handcrafted ceramics have a uniqueness - no two pieces are identical. Often, impressions from my own hands are evident in the soft body of the clay."
