My friend Peter Smith, who has died aged 84, was one of Britain’s most innovative ceramicists of the modern era. His work blurred the line between art and craft. He combined and developed his interest in clay as a sculptural material from its origins in domestic pottery. His latter work combined work thrown on the potter’s wheel and hand construction.

Peter also held a lifelong interest in music, particularly jazz. As a drummer he provided the rhythmic foundation for traditional jazz bands and in particular for Acker Bilk. His love for the music developed from the trad bands of his youth to the abstract expressionism of Ornette Coleman.

He was indebted to traditional British potters – in particular Bernard Leach of the St Ives Pottery. His appreciation of the abstract and the expressive allowed him to, in his later work, to explore improvised unconventional ceramic forms.

Born in Bristol to Ethel (nee Sanders), a bank employee, and Norman Smith, who worked for the British Aircraft Corporation, Peter attended Bristol Technical school; in 1961 he went to Battersea College of Technology (later the University of Surrey) to study metallurgy. He started out as a research scientist for the British Iron and Steel Association, where he worked for seven years. During his time there he was involved in the invention of “foamed steel”, which provides the basis of the foamed metals used in heat exchangers today.

He also attended pottery classes run by Robert and Sheila Fournier at the Chaucer Institute in London with his wife, Jane (nee Furlonger), whom he had met at Battersea, where she was studying physics; they married in 1966.

Six years later they moved to the south-west tip of Cornwall, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. He started by making a large coal-fired climbing kiln, and produced domestic earthenware using traditional methods. Soon afterwards he was voted a full member of the Craftsman Potters Association (CPA), of which he was later voted a fellow. The Victoria and Albert Museum bought two pieces of work from his exhibition at the CPA in London.

Peter’s understanding of other artists’ work steered him first of all to become a member of Newlyn Society of Artists and then later to become the chairman of Newlyn Gallery, in which capacity he promoted exhibitions of early work by Damien Hirst, John Bellany and Maggi Hambling, among others.

In the 1980s and 90s, Peter was also an influential teacher of ceramics at Falmouth University, where he encouraged a spontaneous and improvised approach based on developing technique and an understanding of the medium of clay as an expressive and practical form.

He worked continually until illness prevented him from doing so in the last few months of his life. Latterly he produced more complex, fluid assemblages, emphasising the clay’s plasticity with the addition of wire and other initially extraneous material. He quietly pursued his voyage of discovery in ceramics for as long as time allowed.

He is survived by Jane and his siblings, Laurence and Susan.