Julia Rai is an artist, writer and teacher working predominately in metal clay.

Well known in the international metal clay community, she has been working with metal clay since 2004 and teaching it since 2007. She holds a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, multiple metal clay qualifications and she is a fully qualified further education teacher. She’s a Certified PMC® Instructor and an Art Clay World approved instructor.

Julia is Vice-President of the Alliance for Metal Clay Arts Worldwide (AMCAW). AMCAW’s mission is to encourage a flourishing international metal clay community by nurturing artistic and instructional excellence and providing resources to inspire, engage and support artists of all levels.

Within AMCAW, Julia leads several teams. Most recently she has formed a new team to organise the first AMCAW event to run in the UK – SINTER 2024.

She is chair of the Curating for Excellence committee and the Member Engagement committee. The Curating for Excellence committee is responsible for promoting the excellence of work being created in metal clay through juried competitions, publications and exhibits. The Member Engagement committee seeks ways to increase the benefits of AMCAW membership, engage with the community and support everyone working with metal clay for fun or as a business.

She is also part of the Education Committee and writes articles for the AMCAW Learning Centre.

She is a regular guest tutor on Craftcast presenting live metal clay related classes. These are packaged and can be watched over and over after the initial live class has run.

She is the Director of the Metal Clay Academy, an online resource for everyone interested in metal clay. Launched in 2008, Julia has been the webmaster, editor and researcher for this metal clay resource website from the beginning.

From 2008 until 2019 she worked on projects for the metal clay Masters Registry and she achieved Registry Level 5, the only person in the world to achieve this level. The Registry programme closed at the end of June 2019. To see all 50 of the projects Julia submitted over 10+ years, plus the master work, visit her website here.

She wrote regularly for a number of magazines including Making Jewellery in the UK (which ceased publication in the Spring of 2019) and the international Metal Clay Artist Magazine.

Her first book was published in 2017. It is available from Amazon UK and Amazon US.  You can also order a signed copy from the product page here.

Listen to Julia talking to Jessica Rose from the Jewellers Academy about her metal clay life here…