Michael Casson first made pots in 1945 and trained at Hornsey College of Art. He established his first pottery in 1952. He was a founding member of the Craft Potters Association in 1958 and was active in setting up the first shop in Carnaby Street. With Victor Magrie, he co-founded the Harrow Studio Pottery training course in 1963, which was to train and influence many contemporary potters who aspired to run small-scale potteries. He had a pottery at Prestwood, Buckinghamshire but in 1976 he moved to Wobage Farm in Herefordshire. Casson’s work is based in the ‘Leach Tradition’ of thrown stonware funcitonal pottery and he developed a style which included incised and resist decoration. A hugely influential figure in the british ceramic world, in 2001 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Ceramics Festival in Aberystwyth, an organisation of which he was Honorary President for many years.