John Stecko remembers first drawing at the age of five and never stopping since. He still has his very first drawing which he proudly displays on the wall of his home.

To this day he spends many hours drawing and painting in his spare time, and although he chose a career as a ceramic artist he has entered and won many painting competitions. His first job after leaving college was in the figurine-painting department at Royal Doulton and he knew immediately that he wanted a career in ceramics. He trained for five years in the figurine department at Royal Doulton and during his time at Royal Doulton he joined the ‘Doulton art society’. They held an evening each week where members could paint pictures. An exhibition was staged at the end of each year. It was at one of these exhibitions that he won first prize in the beginner’s oil section and had a highly commended in the watercolour class.

He left Royal Doulton to join Coalport which is part of the Wedgwood group as a figurine painter. After two years, he became decorating manager over all the figurine painters .. As decorating manager one of his duties was to oversee new designs for figurines. He also had the opportunity to put forward his own designs for decoration of these figurines, some of which actually went into production.

After more than thirty years in the pottery industry, John still works for Wedgwood as a Prestige Ceramic Artist. His skills lie in hand-painting scenes, fruit and flowers onto fine bone china plates and vases. Recently he has received training for Pate-sur-Pate, from Dale Bowen. He also demonstrates figurine painting at the Coalport ‘Events’, as well as taking the Coalport Collectors on a V.I.P tours around the factory.

His greatest pleasure continues to be his own hobby as a painter and as his son is in the Navy he has recently turned to naval paintings as a topic matter.

My interests in art are many and varied; I love to experiment with new and different, materials and techniques. Last year after rebuilding the engine on my son’s car, I made a couple of sculptures out of the bits and pieces that had been replaced. The name Valvinium was derived from Delphinium, the flower spike from which my sculpture was inspired

I have always been keen on do it yourself projects and almost every job that I tackle I invariable end up making a picture or a sculpture out of bit and pieces left over or replaced. For example, I once built a stair banister and using the angled offcuts, I created a wooden sculpture.

During the period that I spent in the building trade and mingling with the tradesmen, I learned a lot of useful skills which enabled me to do most of the jobs needed when I bought my own house. One of the jobs was to completely re-plumb all the pipe work to my central heating and domestic water. And as usual, with the offcuts of copper pipes I made sculptures to go on the wall and sculptures to go in the garden.

In my youth I used to regularly go hiking in the peak district and around Snowdonia in Wales. The beautiful scenery, the ancient monuments and especially the babbling streams and brooks inspired me to create a similar effect in my garden which was originally lawned all over. With the skills that I picked up in the building trade, I built a series of pools that are linked together by a stream with waterfalls and I even created my own ‘ancient’ folly and called it “Steckop Castle”! I also managed to fit in a huge wooden garden sculpture. All of which are floodlit at night for maximum effect.