Born in Albany, Western Australia, she was brought to England at the age of nine (1900). She designed and made hooked woollen rugs and silk textiles (1930s-1950s), designed and built coke-fired kilns and sold kiln plans world-wide (1925-1968), and produced salt-glazed stoneware, including the modelled elephants (1959-1967) for which she is best known. She studied design at Kingston-upon-Thames School of Art (1907-1911) where Archibald Knox taught her the coiling technique of handbuilding and whose own designs were influenced by Art Nouveau and Celtic art. After he resigned from Kingston, Denise Wren and her sister left in protest and he continued to be a source of inspiration. She started a studio-workshop in Kingston-upon-Thames (1911) with her sister and friends and together they formed the Knox Guild of Design and Craft to continue his design and art education ideas. Local potters who made chimney pots and clay pipes influenced her, and she was taught to throw by a local flowerpot maker. She subsequently taught her students to respect local pottery traditions. She attended pottery classes at Camberwell School of Art taught by Henry Hopkins (1920).
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She and Henry Wren, whom she had married in 1915, designed and built Potters Croft in Oxshott, Surrey, and founded the Oxshott Pottery (1920) where Rosemary Wren, their only daughter, was born (1922). They bought a Drakenfeld gas-fired muffle kiln and commenced making earthenware pots decorated with slips and glazes, which they continued to make until 1939. They taught pottery courses for teachers and missionaries and took apprentices and promoted the importance of studio pottery and pottery making in education (1922-1950). Together with Henry Wren she organised the Artist Craftsman Exhibitions at Central Hall, Westminster (1922-1937). Following the death of Henry Wren (1947) she continued at Oxshott with her daughter, Rosemary, and was actively involved in the establishment and development of the Craftsmen Potters Association. After 1968 she was unable to continue with coke-fired salt glaze as coke became unavailable so she concentrated on the elephants. Influenced by medieval and early British historic pottery, romantic and often experimental, her pottery stands separately from the Leach tradition in a category of its own. Her role in the development of studio pottery in Britain was given recognition with the exhibition and related publication, The Oxshott Pottery at the Crafts Study Centre, Bath, 1984. She was made an honorary life member of the Craft Potters Association in 1975. Her work is held in many public collections in Britain and abroad.
Text source: Casgliad Cerameg Prifysgol Aberystwyth / Aberystwyth University Ceramic Collection
