THE Christmas Pots in Poppleton show is growing year by year.

"At its conception in 2002, there were five participants, and this year we'll have at least 12 potters as the event has gone from strength to strength, both in terms of local artists and the audience, " says Penny Phillips, who hosts the show next weekend at The Tithe Barn, Church Lane, Nether Poppleton, near York.

For sale will be ceramic jewellery, sculptural work, vases, handthrown teapots, mugs and jugs, plant pots and one-off pots by northern potters.

Among them will be Francis Norton; Geraldine Hughes; Andrea Cundell; Catherine BoyneWhitelegg; Barbara Wood; Ann C Johnson; William H Johnson; Hazel Anderson; Jeremy Grahame and Penny Phillips herself.

Norton, of Littlemoor Pottery in Pudsey, says he "hand-builds sculptures, coiling and slabbing, using porcelain and oxides firing to stoneware"; Hughes, from Sheffield, makes a wheel-thrown range of domestic and decorative ceramics, taking her inspiration for themes and shapes from the natural world and the flow of landscape, plants, birds, rivers and the sea; Cundell, from York, imprints nature upon her distinctive, slender contemporary vases.

Boyne-Whitelegg, of Copmanthorpe, creates functional domestic ware, decorating her joyful pieces with bright, engaging colours and whimsical decorations; Wood, from Seaton Ross, makes stoneware forms that represent lush hedgerow vegetation, decorated with crystalline glazes in greens, browns and blues, and they can be used as vases or planters or simply as sculptural forms in their own right.

Ann C Johnson has been making ceramics for six years at Moor Monkton, where she specialises in imprinting clay with natural materials and then forming these into vessels and contemporary art; William H Johnson has spent many years on the potter's wheel, creating different shapes and experimenting with decoration and unusual glazes.

Anderson, from Poppleton, handbuilds porcelain paper clay vases and also throws stoneware and porcelain high-fired functional ware; Grahame, of Stamford Bridge, retired to become a hobby potter and now throws domestic stoneware for everyday use; Phillips, the event founder and organiser, makes functional and decorative ware in limoge porcelain. Her delicate bowls, cups, teapots and vases are finished in a soft green glaze with iron oxide decoration, and her latest development is to experiment with figurative work that explores the nature of movement.

Christmas Pots in Poppleton will be open from 10am to 4pm on November 25 and 26; admission is free. The Lord Mayor of York, Councillor Janet Hopton, will open this selling exhibition at 10am on the Saturday morning.