Although foremost a potter, his deep insight, curiosity and his singular skills enabled him to work across a range of disciplines.

[1] During the nineteen seventies and eighties, thousands of these tea sets were sold, either hand made from Lustre Pottery studio or manufactured by Carltonware in Stoke-on-Trent.

[citation needed] A plethora of novel designs began to gain prominence in the high street, for example a liquorice allsorts handbag and novelty teapots.

He developed a line of cast tableware, instantly recognisable by their strong, classical shapes and rich cobalt blue glaze although copper and manganese were also used.

In 1989, strapped for cash with a young family to raise, he began to lecture part-time for Falmouth University on the BA Hons Ceramics degree.

[10] In 2001, Michell was commissioned by Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to become Artist in Residence for a new Bodmin Hospital,[11] He commissioned various local artists, including his former wife Napiorkowska, and designed and made the blue glazed brick wall bearing the hospital's name.

[12] In 2001, Michell decorated a hydrotherapy pool at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, with poet Mike Hughes.

In France he was able to spend more time developing his ideas and revisiting old ones such as the fashion models he and Sally Tuffin had collaborated on in 1985.

Paintings in oil included several series, one of the French countryside surrounding the studio where he lived and worked, another a series of studies concerning the alteration of colour according to the light conditions, painted whilst staying on Le Point de Raz, the most Westerly point in Brittany.

He wrote and published a mystery novel, The Salt Glaze Murders[4] and he cut hazel from the French hedgerows to make a series of greenwood chairs.

[citation needed] From 2014, due to the persistence of a respiratory illness, he began to spend the winters in the Algarve in Portugal with his wife, Julia and her 4 dogs.