Janice Tchalenko, who died aged 76 in 2018, was an admired ceramicist, designer and artist who bridged the gap between art and large-scale production. 

In the 1960s and 70s she made fashionable domestic wares, “brown pots”, informed by the work of Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach, working.

In 1981 she revolutionised the field, shocking many studio potter colleagues, by evolving glazes of great richness and depth of colour to adorn reduction-fired stoneware; painting, sponging and slip-trailing complex semi-abstract decorative schema on bold simplified shapes; using piscatorial and amphibian casts as handles and knops; and taking inspiration from the ceramics of the Middle East, from the capricious mannerist Bernard Palissy, and from European rococo earthenware and porcelain and 19th century art pottery.

A series of large thrown bowls, flared jugs with flowing handles and press moulded dishes followed – magnificent objects, much admired and much imitated. But her work was, in tune with her socialist politics, to reach a wider audience from 1983 in collaboration with Steven Course at the Dartington Training Workshop, renamed Dart Pottery in 1984. Her tableware ranges for Dart, Poppy, Black Rose and Leopard, were an instant success, winning both the Manchester Prize for Art in Production and the BBC Radio 4 Enterprise Award in 1988. Production at Dart, initially hand-thrown, became more mechanised as demand soared. Decoration was always hand-painted using techniques evolved by Tchalenko.

She went on to design furnishing textiles and ceramics for Tricia Guild at Designers Guild in 1985, a range of ceramics for Next Interiors in 1986 and tableware for Poole Pottery in 1994-95. Until 2006 she continued to work with Poole, creating designs for the John Lewis Partnership, and more recently she launched a collection for Royal Stafford.