Bill Samuels trained as a painter and sculptor at East Sydney Technical College then went on to study ceramics there. His first pots - wood-fired raku - were made in the mid 1960s and he built his first wood-fired kiln in 1969. In the 1973 directory, he is based at Macquarie Fields, NSW. Shortly after, he moved his young family to Yanderra in the Southern Highlands. In the 1988 directory, he is based at Woodstock via Cowra. He has also had studios in the Blue Mountains at Katoomba and, since 2000, at Good Forrest in the Hartley Valley. He has been President of the Australian Potters' Society and was Head of Ceramics at the National Art School from 1997 to 2009. In his professional practice, he is a woodfirer specialising in shino-type glazes. Work may be marked with an impressed 'S' in a circle. In the Celebrating the Master catalogue, it is recorded as 'BS 03'.