Emmaniel Cooper Memorial Lecture 2026: Sara Flynn

In this lecture Sara Flynn will share her experiences, the challenges, key people, places, choices, successes, failures and curve-ball opportunities that have come her way throughout a deeply satisfying life with clay. Integral to this journey is Sara’s passion for her chosen material – porcelain; a hunger to learn; and a commitment to the sculptural potential of the ceramic vessel as expressed through her treatment of colour, form, line, contours and edges.

Sara Flynn is based in Cork, Ireland, the city where she was born and then educated (at the Crawford College of Art & Design). Her career began in 1999 producing small-scale functional pots, a practice that has since developed into a focus on one-off sculptural decorative vessels in porcelain. Her work is held in many major national and international collections including The V&A, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Hepworth Gallery, the Gardiner Museum, Toronto and The Art Institute of Chicago. She was shortlisted for the inaugural edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize in 2017 and has been a member of the Experts Panel for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize since 2018. She is represented by Erskine, Hall & Coe, Mayfair, London.

The Emmanuel Cooper Memorial Lecture is presented by the Crafts Study Centre in partnership with 318 Ceramics and the Royal College of Art to celebrate the life and work of renowned potter Emmanuel Cooper.

The lecture series is supported by State Ceramics.

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