Julian Stair (born 1955 in Bristol) is an English potter, academic and writer. He makes groups of work using a variety of materials, from fine glazed porcelain to coarse engineering brick clays. His work ranges in scale from hand-sized cups and teapots to monumental jars at over 6 feet tall and weighing half a ton. Stair has exhibited internationally over the last 30 years and has work in thirty public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum, American Museum of Art & Design, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Boymans Museum, Netherlands, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan, Kolumba Museum, Cologne, Germany and Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. In 2004 he was awarded the European Achievement Award by the World Crafts Council for the project Extended Inhumation, and received a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to research the making of monumental ceramics at Wienerberger's brick factory in Sedgley. In 2008 the Art Fund purchased Monumental Jar V for Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) and in 2014 purchased "Reliquary for a Common Man" for the Crafts Council. In 2017 Julain was the recipient of the bavarois State Prize in recognition of outstanding contribution to contemporary art and design. Recent projects include the solo exhibitions: "Quotidian", the re-imagining of the historic 'Grand Service at Corvi-Mora Gallery, London and Quietus: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body which was commissioned by mima and supported by Arts Council England. This exhibition addressed the containment of the human body in death and featured a series of funerary works, from cinerary jars to life-size sarcophagi.