Trained at Camberwell and the RCA, Mo Jupp (1938 - 2018) came to prominence with a striking series of helmets in the early 1970s, objects which had a boldness of expression unusual in British ceramics. They had a ritual totemic quality, and with their archetypal shapes and often blistered surfaces, these objects possessed an almost preternatural power that continued a new spirit in clay initiated by the likes of Gordon Baldwin, Gillian Lowndes, Dan Arbeid and Ruth Duckworth in the preceding decade.

Jupp's later figures - thin attenuated forms, standing or sitting, sentinel or splayed - vary widely in scale and posture, but are all marked by their sense of economy and abbreviation. Jupp had an ability to say a great deal with very little, complex bodies often conjured up from just a few rolls of clay, freely assembled. A very meditative artist, who explored the infinite variety of a handful of subjects, particularly the female nude, Jupp had also recently returned to that old obsession, the helmet.

David Whiting