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 founded the Cornwall School of Art, Craft and Jewellery in 2012 delivering classes and courses in St Austell, Cornwall until 2022. She hosted a wide range of international tutors including Deb Karash, Molly Sharp, Anna Mazon, Liz Sabol, Iwona Tamborska, Terry Kovalcik, Barbara Becker Simon and Michael David Sturlin.

She moved to Rushden in Northamptonshire in early 2023 and has a small home studio there.

Julia was Vice-President of the Alliance for Metal Clay Arts Worldwide (AMCAW), standing down at the end of 2004.

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 led the Curating for Excellence team and the Member Engagement team. She also led the team who organised the SINTER event in the UK in 2024.

​She was the Director of the Metal Clay Academy, an online resource for everyone interested in metal clay. Launched in 2008, Julia was the webmaster, editor and researcher for this metal clay resource website from the beginning. The site closed down at the end of 2024.

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 book was published in 2017. It is available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

She now teaches bespoke classes and the Art Clay Level 1 and 2 Diploma on demand from her home studio in Rushden, Northampton. She teaches the Art Clay Diploma Levels 1 and 2, either as separate courses or in the combined Art Clay Intensive. Find out more about this metal clay qualification here.

She also has a growing number of downloadable video classes on Craftcast and four metal clay video classes on the Jewellers Academy that are part of their online Diploma in Silver Metal Clay.