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Marea Gazzard had a design background when she began studying ceramics with Rushforth and Douglas at ESTC in the early 1950s.

She was influenced by the hand-building techniques of Ruth Duckworth and the form and scale of Grecian and Etruscan pots.

She persistently argued for interaction and cross-fertilisation between art forms, rejecting conventional art and craft boundaries. This was a position strongly supported by leading potters of the time as the art/craft debate increasingly marginalised craft from contemporary art practice.

Post-modern art development presented itself as the antithesis of craft processes although there was a lot of common ground in the impetus to confront and debate contemporary social issues through art and craft practice. However at this stage the expressive languages of each practice were perceived as oppositional.