Julia Rai

About Julia Rai

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.

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 the Curating for Excellence team and the Member Engagement team. The Curating team is responsible for promoting the work being created in metal clay through juried publications and competitions. The Member Engagement team’s main driver is how AMCAW can meet the needs of metal clay artists and develop the benefits they want to make membership an absolute must-have.

​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. 

Between 2008 and 2019 Julia worked on projects for the metal clay Masters Registry. She is the only person in the world to achieve level five of the Registry programme and submit a master work. The Registry programme closed at the end of June 2019. You can see all 50 projects that Julia created during the 10+ years she’s been working on the programme plus the master work in the Masters Registry section of this website.

​She wrote regularly for a number of magazines including Making Jewellery in the UK and the international Metal Clay Artist Magazine.

​Her first book was published in 2017. It is available from Amazon UK and Amazon US or you can order a signed copy from the CSACJ website here.

She teaches a variety of subjects including Unique Textures for Metal Clay, Adding Colour to Metal, Torch Fired Enamel, Lentil Beads and Hollow Forms and the Art Clay Level 1 and 2 Diploma. She also has a number of downloadable video classes on Craftcast and two metal clay video classes on the Jewellers Academy.