Having trained at Camberwell School of Art, where he was taught by Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and Bryan Newman, Anthony Hepburn was also deeply influenced by the American movement in ceramics.
His work can be compared with the 1960s West Coast movement known as Funk, even though Hepburn did not use the ‘bawdy locker-room’ images, such as tea pots with penis spouts for example - as those used by Robert Arneson. His work was dominated by slab built boxes, and plinths supporting simularcra telephones, a toaster and milk bottles. For Ann Sutton, Hepburn was ‘the first exciting craft ceramics of our time’, the embodiment of a new movement and spirit of young artists in the crafts movement of the late 1960s.
Hepburn's impact extended beyond his personal artistry into the realm of education. He served as Artist-in-Residence and head of the Ceramics Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1992 to 2008, nurturing a generation of artists and contributing to the evolution of contemporary ceramics.
