The Japanese character ‘Mon’ represents many things in Japanese culture, but its essence is the beginning and end of things, the portal from one moment to the next. My approach to making and teaching is done in the same spirit: a gateway the creative life.

I first came upon the character when I bought a stamp in Kyoto, thinking that is looked very much like my initials, PG.  Only when I returned to the UK in 2013, after more than twenty years away, and started using the stamp to mark my ceramics, did I realise the symbolism it held for my new beginning....