Biography

Work in Public Collections

  • Working on a commission for Reading Museum 
  • Working on a commission for Watts Gallery, Guildford
  • V&A, London
  • The Hepworth, Wakefield, installation of 2 sculptures, 3 prints & 1 wall sculpture
  • Fitzwilliam Museum
  • Sovereign Asian Arts, Hong Kong
  • Manchester Art Gallery
  • Her Highness Sheikha Maryam Bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, Abu Dhabi 
  • Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
  • Antony House, National Trust
  • Her Royal Highness Rania Al-Abdullah, Jordan
  • Jerwood Foundation, 3 Sculptures 
  • Leeds Museum & Art Gallery, installation of 3 sculptures
  • Walker Art Gallery and Museum, Liverpool
  • Touchstone Museum & Gallery
  • Higham Hall, Cockermouth, Cumbria, 2 sculptures
  • Dundee Museum and Art Gallery
  • Harris Museum, Preston
  • Shipley Museum and Art Gallery, Gateshead
  • Bolton Museum
  • Gallery Oldham
  • Peter Scott Gallery Trust, Lancaster
  • Toe Gallery, Mumbai, India
  • Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, sculpture, 2005
  • Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Wall sculpture, 2013
  • Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, 5 wallpaper designs, 2019
  • Knowsley Museums and Galleries

Public Art Commissions

  • 'Light Catcher’ 14'H Oak, celebrating 50 years of the AONB, Forest of Bowland
  • 4 Viking Cruise liners – 4 ceramic wall friezes on Viking, Viking Sea, Viking Sky & Viking Sun Ships
  • P&O Cruise liner Britannia – 4 large bronze sculptures
  • ‘The Flower Dome’ 4'H x 8'Dia - Rampton Hospital/Secure Unit, Art Project, Nottingham
  • ‘Flight of the Osprey' 4'H x 20'W, Fence sculpture and wall-mounted friezes - Arnold Lodge, art project with A.I.M. for the new Rutland Ward, Leicester
  • Azura Cruiser P&O, 26 free-standing clay sculptures and wall-mounted friezes.
  •  ‘Blossom Way’ 8'H x 40'W  - ceramic wall sculpture,  Blackburn (Northgate)
  •  ‘6 gateway sculpture’  2 x (11' x 2'Sq) & 4 x (6'H x 2'Sq), brick clay - Nature Reserve Sculpture Park, Clitheroe Ribble Valley
  •  Designed ‘Paving & Fencing’ -  Barbra Castle Way, Blackburn
  •  ‘Ceramic Wall Tiles Relief’, 4'H x 10'W  - National Wildflower Centre, Liverpool

 

Private Commissions

To date - 2002 - Numerous private commissions for various clients, creating indoor and outdoor sculptures

 

Publications - referencing my work

Dreams Made Manifest - Halima Cassell ISBN 978-0-9539636-4-5
Carved Earth - Ceramic by Halima Cassell ISBN 0-9545563-4-8
‘Light Structures’, Halima Cassell at Blackwell ISBN 978-1-906043-13-1
Fondazione SEM, Halima Cassell Residency in Pietrasanta’, Italy
Araam: Breathing Space - Halima Cassell ISBN 978-0-9567755-1-1
Earth | Atmosphere Ceramic by Halima Cassell ISBN 978-0-9564845-1-2
The Pot Book by Edmund de Waal ISBN 978-0-7148-4799-3
The Workshop Guide to Ceramics by Hudson & Quinn Clay in Art International - K. Tarkasis 05/06 ISBN 1790-6458
Craft & Art of Clay (5th edition) by Laurence King Publishing ISBN-1-9781856697286

 

Reviews, Articles and Features

Crafts magazine, September/October 2021 issue, front cover & 8 page write up
Crafts magazine Selected articles/reviews 2005 - present
Home & Garden Feb 2015
Home & Antiques Nov 2014
Hyperseeing International Society of the Arts, Mathematics & Architecture, Summer 2014
Craft Arts International (Australia) issue 89 2013
The Lancashire of the North West May 2013
Glazed Expressions DACS Magazine issue 68 2011
Art and Architectural Journal 2009
Art and Perception 2009
Keramik Magazine Europa (Germany) issue 30 2008
Taiwan Contemporary Dec/Jan 06/07
Nukta Art (Pakistan) Vol.2 2007
International Gallerie Vol.8 No.1 2005
Ceramic Review issue 221 Jan/Feb 2005
Big Issue (North) 525 2004
Numerous radio interviews - BBC Radio Lancashire & Asian Network

 

Achievements, Scholarships and Residencies

To Date - 2004 –  Visiting lecturer Nationally and Internationally at Colleges, Universities, Museums, Galleries and at various establishments
2021 - Appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the Queen’s 2021 New Year Honours list, for Services to Art
2021 - Scholarship - Glass Foundry, Stroud - 6 weeks
2018 - Winner of The Sovereign Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong
2018 - Elected Alumni for the University of Central Lancashire, Preston 
2016 – Elected Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculpture (RBS)
2013-14 – Research grants into explorations into concrete, Knowsley Museums and Art Galleries – 6 months
2011 – Scholarship – Brian Mercer Stone Carving residency in Pietrasanta, Italy – 4 months
2011 – Elected Fellowship for the Craft Potters Association (CPA)
2010 – Elected member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors (RBS)
2010 – Honorary Fellow at Blackburn College
2010 – Shortlisted for the BCB Awards “one-off category”
2010 – Tel Hai ceramic symposium in ceramics, Israel - 2 weeks
2009 - Residency in Pakistan - 2 months
2008 - Residency at 20-21 Visual Art Centre - 3 months
2007 - A I M art project, Rampton Secure Hospital, permanent installation - 5 months
2007 - Residency in Fuki, Japan - 11 weeks
2007 – Invited Guest World Contemporary Ceramics 4th Biennale, South Korea
2005 – Creativity Development Award 2005, East Lancashire, Winner
2005 – ART 05, North West, Finalist
2004 – Nominated & highly commended, New Designers, 1 Year On London

Funding and Sponsors

2019 - Art Council Funding (for publication)
2018 - Art Council Funding 
2017 - LEADER grant, European Funding
2000 - 2012 Shaws of Darwen. Darwen, Lancashire
2003 - 2009 – Craft Council & Arts Council Funding
1997 - 2009 - Hansons (Marshalls) Brick, Accrington
2004 - Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery

 

Education

2003 PDQ – Technology for Designer Makers, Manchester City College
2002 MA – Design, University of Central Lancashire
1997 BA (Hons) – 3D Design, University of Central Lancashire
1994 BTEC National Diploma – Art and Design, Blackburn College

 

Work can be also purchased at:

Soden Collection, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
Joanna Bird Contemporary Collection, London
Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
Castlegate House Gallery, Cockermouth
CAA Gallery, London

  • Halima Cassell is a maker of considerable versatility, who has extended her signature work in clay to a range of new materials, including marble, glass and porcelain
    – Andrew Lambirth, Art Critic - Spectator Magazine

  • She was sketching constantly and continually sought to transpose her drawings into sculptural forms. The surface as well as the shapes emerged together in sculpture which often combined enormous complexity with simplicity and unity.
    – Helaine Blumenfeld OBE FRBS Dlitt

  • While working, Cassell becomes deeply involved in each piece to the point where she is unaware of her surroundings even watching her work on a piece for a few minutes, it is obvious that the process commands all her attention
    – Emmanuel Cooper

  • The most inspiring ceramic work I have seen in thirty years! Beautiful, mesmerising, powerful and thoughtful. Genius! Love, love, love this work.
    – Judith Ramsgate, 53 years old

  • The geometry and the mathematics involved in Halima’s work have the same effect on me as listening to Bach: she manages to get the same essential harmony of shape, form and detail. Her pieces are deeply fashioned, which is unusual in ceramics
    – Eric Knowles (Ceramics Expert)

  • Beautiful – amazing to see someone work with such a variety of material to create such stunning, intricate pieces. I can imagine them out in the world, near water and nature. Beautiful, thank you.
    –

  • Her main preoccupation and sculptural impulse is to penetrate beneath the skin of the form to reveal the structure within – the crystalline seed of the stone, or the skeleton-like armature she perceives within the clay. She does not carve exteriors but reveals interiors – the folded abstract inner landscapes of her singular and highly imaginative vision.
    – Andrew Lambirth, Art Critic - Spectator Magazine

  • I find her work uplifting, I would never consider buying it solely as an investment
    – Eric Knowles (Ceramics Expert)

  • Cassell’s Work Is Subliminal in its originality, having no parallel in the sculptural or crafts genres, whose borders it crosses.
    – Jean Vacher, Collections Manger, Crafts Study Centre, Farnham

  • It is not easy to put into words the effect that Halima Cassell’s remarkable ceramic sculptures have on you when you first encounter a well displayed section of her work
    – Zachary Kingdom