Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 113 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

The work of Sam Chung, Professor of Art at Arizona State University, has been seen in a variety of group and solo exhibitions in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and New York City over the past few years − as well as at the Eighth Gyeonggi International Ceramics Biennale in 2015. The second Biennale in 2003 was his Korean debut (he had visited Korea many times in prior years) where he won an Honorable Mention. The award was significant because all of Chung’s art alludes to Korean ceramic history, especially celadon. What he brings to such an ancient tradition (dating in Korea from the 10th century AD) is an eccentric pot profile, extraordinary technical control over various shades of celadon (a grey-green to pale white glaze which arrived from China during the…

The future of modern contemporary ceramics today is in the hands of by those who have forged a career internationally. While ceramics has been under pressure in the educational system (especially in the UK) and has played a secondary role to that of painting and other fine art disciplines. It begs the question, where are the international makers of the future to come from? A beacon of excellence in the UK, and one which is recognised internationally as the best post-graduate establishment, is the Royal College of Art (RCA). RCA’s graduate show suggests that the makers to answer that question may be found here, in this London seat of learning and experimentation. When entering this year’s final degree show you are hit by collection of very diverse work which explores…

“I’m an image chaser,” she smiles. “Once I have an idea then I take on the technical challenge to achieve it.” Clay allows Liz Watts to create pieces that can be appreciated through 360 degrees. It is only pieces that will withstand firing that are put in the kiln; Liz casts weaker ones in bronze. “I love the experimentation with ceramics and the technical understanding of the clay work,” says Liz. In 2018 she had two pieces accepted for the Society of Women Artists open at The Mall Galleries, London “which was a fantastic acknowledgement of my work” she says. “Exploring the scientific properties, sometimes the physics of what happens in a firing, sometimes understanding the chemistry. I always say porcelain is like a difficult child, you cannot force it…

I was recently one of eight participants at an international ceramic conference in Jianshui, a small city in south-western China. Jianshui is situated in a predominantly rural area known as the Purple Valley, just north of Vietnam. It has clean air, a burgeoning middle-class and a living pottery heritage of several thousand years. As a group of visiting professionals, we were invited primarily to attend the opening of a publicly funded ceramics village. We were also asked to share our art backgrounds, conduct demonstrations, observe a national throwing and decorating competition, participate in an international exhibition and tour many of the local cultural sites. As a finale, we were asked to share our observations at a closing symposium, and to “please bring a suit and tie”. An agenda that unfolded…

Oscar Wilde’s witticism "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china" reflects the status and allurement of blue and white as an enduring phenomena. Co-authored by scholars and avid transferware collectors Richard Halliday and Loren Zeller, Chinoiserie is a wonderful compendium of original sources and the designs they inspired across more than two centuries of printed transferware, including discussion of its technology, inspirations and derivations. In a well-researched text the authors share their insights into the origins, forms and imagery of this distinctive and important field of ceramic research. From its origins in the East, through its importation, digestion and adaptation in the West, this is a story of inspiration, imitation and artistic change vividly played out within the confines of the design…

This exhibition project is based on old vase molds chosen from the long and distinguished history of the porcelain factory, Porsgrunds Porselænsfabrik (PP).The project’s dialogue with the design history of this porcelain factory addresses the origins of the individual vase shapes from our industrial cultural heritage, with clear references to the factory’s unique history and to the designers who have left their distinctive mark on them. The vase form/vessel is one of the oldest utility objects we have. It is known from mankind’s earliest history and from all cultures through the ages. The cluster of vases here in Fjøset (meaning the byre) includes more than 1,200 pieces put together to form a large, complex installation. I was given free rein and allowed to choose whatever I wanted from the factory’s…

The science of glazes is an area not commonly explored or extremely palatable for most potters. And when you add dichroic properties to the mix, most artists would run for the hills (as many people do when my type start becoming technical). Specifically, when I start talking about characteristics of glazes, eyes start glazing over. It’s far more enjoyable in text form, with some nice pictures and explanations for those interested enough give it a read. Dichroism can be defined as a type of property in which different colors are seen across various types of light.1 In objects with dichroic properties, certain wavelengths of light are absorbed under various qualities of light (i.e. LED, filament, halogen, or fluorescent) while others are not.2 As a result, a different color is exhibited…

This article would have been impossible to write if I had not had the privilege of spending time with Carolyn Genders, visiting her studio and witnessing the act of her making. Making with Carolyn illustrates the idea of a master of their craft – the sheer amount of knowledge that is both consciously technical and intuitively executed. Seeing the ability of a committed practitioner to draw upon many years of doing, thinking, making, as well as equal amounts of undoing, remaking and rethinking. “The world is full of intellectual makers – without the knowledge of materiality.” This phrase, one of the first we exchanged, encapsulates the rigour which Carolyn brings to her work. Carolyn embodies haptic knowledge. The pieces she makes emerge from the clay in an act of unthinking…

The British Craftsmen Potters Association’s shop and gallery (the CCC) is located on the opposite side of Great Russell Street from the main entrance to London’s British Museum. The CCC shows objects that many see as irrelevant in a post-industrial society. Hand-made pots of uncertain function and status that mimic the techniques and forms found in the latter but are otherwise utterly different in significance and meaning. The historic pots in the British Museum were embedded in the economic, cultural and social context in which they were made. Despite the ethnographic and anthropological isolation imposed by the museum they retain the authority and power that shared value and a common cultural language seems to bestow. The museum’s African collection was radically reconfigured when it was rehoused in 2010. Formally located…

Whenever I’ve described an art exhibition as accessible, I usually just mean that it’s pleasantly unburdened by the tedious anti-magic of philosophic, academic pretention which seems to actively try to make art incomprehensible to the viewer. But the exhibition Process and Presence: Contemporary Disability Sculpture offered an entirely different meaning to the term in showcasing work by artists with disabilities, and displaying it in such a way as to be, quite literally, physically accessible to anyone. In addition to heightening our awareness of the disabled community, the show offered innovative suggestions for how to make the museum experience more inclusive for the disabled and, by extension, other routine tasks that most of us take for granted, like simply navigating a doorway, an ATM machine, or a set of stairs. The…

Soda firing has become popular over the years since my initial research, but there are still some factors that have to be considered to achieve a satisfactory surface area on pots. Whether firing with soda ash (sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate) or salt (sodium chloride) it is important that only the vaporized sodium reacts with the alumina and silica present in the clay body forming a sodium, alumina, silicate glaze surface. Greater care has to be taken with sodium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate as it does not disperse broadly as vapor compared to sodium chloride (salt). For efficient vaporization to take place in ether salt or soda firing the material must be dispersed in small amounts over a wide surface area at the highest level above the firebox. In order for…

Meanwhile for Charles Baudelaire ugliness is opposed to harmony – “it is the unresolved tension, the conflict of contradictory forces that has been left standing as it is”. Beau-laid is a wonderful French word that introduces us to the notion of beauty within a piece that might, on the surface, be perceived as ugly; it is the idea that these seemingly contradictory values can co-exist in the same work. Emerging in philosophy, it also appears regularly in art theory from classical tradition which presupposed that the aim of art was to manifest beauty. Conversely, it was said that it was the absence of beauty that makes something ugly to thr German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, who introduced aesthetics into modern philosophy, defining it as a science of knowing. There followed Karl…

In 1939, Fortune Magazine ran an article on ceramics titled The art with an inferiority complex. Fast forward to 1961 and Rose Slivka proclaimed that ceramics had “broken new ground and challenged past traditions, suggested new meanings and possibilities to old functions and habits of seeing, and has won the startled attention of a world unprepared for the expected.”1 Indeed a great deal had changed in the intervening years; in late 1940s Japan the revolutionary artists of the Sodeisha Group radically challenged the conventional thinking, embedded in tradition, that had existed in ceramic art, while in the US groundbreaking artists such as Peter Voulkos and Jim Leedy emerged in the 1950s opening the door for future generations. This led to a view that, as Maria Elena Buszek has noted, “craft…

The ceramic works of Winton and Rosa Eugene feature sensitive portraits of African-Americans, scenes of Southern landscape and vernacular architecture, and messages of identity, ecological concerns and social justice issues. These subjects are presented via painted or carved imagery on everyday functional forms or large commemorative vases and bowls, as well as sculptural vessels. The Eugenes are not the products of academy or apprenticeship. They are self-taught, which makes their achievement all the more impressive. Winton was an arty kid who was always told “you can’t do that for a living” so he sold carpeting and then became a hog farmer when the couple (both brought up in the South) decided to relocate from Chicago to South Carolina to be closer to family. Rosa was a nurse. Winton carried a…

Intro: road trip I almost missed the opening of the 2019 Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramic Award. I’d been at the Melbourne Convention Centre for Denfair, Australia’s biggest design trade-fair and also to attend the Friends and Associates/Local Design exhibition Expo 2019, a tightly curated, three day design pop-up, held at what used to be the Meat Market Craft Centre in North Melbourne, now ‘reimagined’ as a venue for hire. Caught the train back to Bendigo, jumped in the car and called in to work at Bendigo Pottery, Australia’s oldest and largest ceramics manufacturer, before continuing down the highway to Shepparton, arriving just in time for the speeches. That little journey covered a lot of ground – design, craft, industry and finally art. For what it’s worth, that’s the context…

The purpose of this article is to introduce potters to a new type of graph to help them identify composition areas for new glaze recipe development and assist them in producing glazes with desired finishes (e.g. glossy, satin or matt). Potters interested in creating their own ceramic glaze recipes usually start by modifying published glaze recipes. This process can be very systematic through replacement of individual ingredients or simply mixing different glaze recipes together to generate new ones. As endeavor to learn more, they discover the unity molecular formula (UMF) and how it relates to glazes in their firing temperature range of interest as well as some of the limitations of the UMF approach1. The next step might be attending an advanced glaze development workshop like one offered by Carty2,…