Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 115 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

For some time now, London-based ceramic sculptor Claire Partington has been examining the intersections between historical English and continental ceramic figures and the empires that loved them. With an early apprenticeship in the stacks at the Victoria & Albert Museum and elsewhere, Partington sites her mock-Meissen/Staffordshire/Sèvres beings within porcelain-world pilgrimage sites such as Musée Ariana in Geneva; the d’Ursel and Gaasbeek castles in Belgium; the Bernardaud (china factory) Foundation in Limoges and, recently in her North American debut, at Seattle Art Museum and nearby Winston Wächter Gallery. Partington is addressing the glories and gaffes that accompanied the rise of figurative ceramic sculpture, costumed and caricatured − symbolic and realistic human figures. As in 18th Century central and southern European manufactory sites from Vienna to Capodimonte, animals make occasional appearances. In…

As a child, when I was naughty, my mother would sometimes threaten to kick me “all the way to Halifax.” Although I never dared to ask her exactly where Halifax was, I imagined that it must be a very, very, long way away. Later, after I grew older, I thought it must be an imaginary place, somewhere like Timbuktu. It was only once I was nearly grown that I discovered that both Halifax and Timbuktu were real places, and yes, both were quite far away from my home in suburban Denver. I did not expect that I would someday meet someone who was actually from Halifax, which I’m sure most of you know, is located in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. That person from Halifax is the subject of…

I opened the book after receiving it in the mail, the equivalent of you picking it up in a bookshop and looking through it. My first thought was this is an echo of Gerry William’s extensive interviews with potters for Studio Potter magazine. Here are fifty interviews with potters, following a short introduction and raison d’être by Koplos. As the subtitle says, it’s a book about useful pottery, mostly what used to be known as domestic ware, for use with food and drink; the kind of pottery where the product is described as a plate, or a bowl, or a mug and has no need for fancy titles. A flick through with a closer look here and there reveals potters talking about their lives in plain language. There are no…

It may be the bane of Ron Nagle’s existence that his work is compared with that of Ken Price. The two men are brothers in aesthetics, both known for intense color, small scale, and starting with cups but working their way to unexpected forms. Price, being a few years older, got there first. Nagle’s work is distinguished from Price’s by his continuing commitment to diminutive and imaginative scale, and it is currently more pictorial and less specifically erotic, although it retains a striking tactility. Nagle has now been taken on by Matthew Marks, the important New York gallery that represented Price (supplementing his longtime California gallery, LA Louver) and was able to get him the major-museum retrospective he had long deserved. So that may lie in Nagle’s future as well.…

We had been searching for a project, we wanted to work differently, and we wanted to challenge ourselves. Although everything we do is in some way a continuation of what has been made previously, most of our work is made as a one-off, to be viewed in isolation. We had on occasion made small collections based on a single theme but we wanted a substantial project that we could spend more time on, to develop ideas across several objects and be shown as a collection that told a story as a whole. It was late 2018, I was thinking about my father Michael Anthony Lindo, reminded of him by the 70th anniversary of the journey from Jamaica to England of the troopship Empire Windrush, and all the awful news stories…

I I’m looking at a piece of solid fire. There’s no way an artist could have made this object alone. A child, maybe, but I don’t think so, for even in a child’s scribble there is style. You could make a copy of it, but there’s no way you could form it, ex nihilo, out of your own head. The sculpture is beautifully simple. And that’s the key. No human hand could have created this sculpture because no hand, however innocent, can escape the fetters of its style. The object is there, yes, it has been made, yet whichever way you look at it the question remains: who (or should that be what?) did the making? The sculptor who made this object had fifty hands, each attached to a different…

Q: On my last firing the glaze had a number of pinholes. What causes this and how can I prevent this happening? There are many factors which can cause this common defect, often the most difficult part of the investigation is discovering which one resulted in a pin hole. Glaze pin holes are characterized by small holes in the fired glaze having a round edge sometimes revealing the underlying clay body. They are often confused with blisters which have a ‘sharp crater’ like edge. To further complicate an accurate diagnosis both defects can share some of the same causes. Glazes that are highly fluid when mature will allow gases generated in the clay body or glaze to escape resulting in few or no pin holes. Vertically glazed pottery can be…

Joon Hee Kim, a Canadian ceramic artist born in Seoul, Korea, has a curious mind. Her career started as a graphic designer then an art director in Seoul, yet she found the two-dimensional format too limited and craved to work in three dimensions. However, she followed a different path and attended the famous Le Cordon Bleu school in Ottawa to obtain a diploma in Patisserie in 2010. During her culinary studies, she discovered the work of Jun Kaneko at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics, in Toronto. Kim says that “life is not always sweet as a pastry”1 that is quickly consumed. She decided to study ceramics at Sheridan College where she graduated with honours. After receiving the Cecil Lewis Sculpture Scholarship from the Chelsea College of Arts (London, UK) where…

With much fanfare, Chris Gustin’s solo exhibition opened at Saratoga Clay Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, NY in November of 2019. While we chose the word “eloquent” for the title of the exhibition, Gustin’s work is not short on appropriate adjectives. Expressive, stirring, fluid, powerful, luscious and articulate also come to mind. The woodfired surfaces, rich in depth from a combination of glaze and ash, feel alive, with gravity pulling the glossy pools down and around each subtle curve. Wheel thrown and hand-built, each piece is one-of-a-kind and made unique by Chris’s intuitive process and the unpredictability and magic of each atmospheric wood firing. As I walk through the gallery I am pulled around each piece, drawn to touch the voluptuous surfaces and fondle the hills and valleys. On closer…

Making is about movement. The sinuous malleability of clay, the direction of hands upon the surface, the tension between maker and material. Drawing from myth, and her dance background, ceramicist Kathy Kranias moulds and transforms clay to not only tell a story, but to capture movement and emotion. And while there is an absence of a figurative body in her work, there is a trace and memory of the artist’s gesture. Kranias’ sculptural work is as meditative as it is spontaneous. Ceramics demands precision as well as patience, yet is infinitely diverse in its many forms. Kranias’ vessel forms bring to mind a long history of clay referencing the female body, while simultaneously capturing the experiences of the maker’s life: muse, motherhood, making. An important element for making is time,…

One of the strangest aspects of research is exploring magical rituals associated with ancient traditions. Archaeologists continually discover objects designed to invoke victory, including successful animal and business hunting; the control of people; protection; ensuring a happy marriage to a new partner and, unsurprisingly, revenge. The history of man’s belief in a magical and/or a higher power is as old as the human race itself with spells, curses and incantations featuring widely across all cultures. It was several thousand years ago that cave paintings were used for their ‘magical’ qualities, bringing forth animals for hunting. Evidence associated with found objects prove ‘magic’ pendants, rings and utensils were used by all strata of society – from kings and queens to commoners and that the signs and symbols on the designs were…

It’s the morning after the private view and all is quiet in the ceramics department of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; a perfect opportunity to spend quality time in Room 146, home to Blanc de Chine, a Continuous Conversation. This exhibition, featuring work by contemporary artists as well as iconic historical pieces from the museum’s collection, is a celebration of the excellence and enduring influence of Blanc de Chine. In Room 146, the bright September sunlight creates patterns of light that stream across the parquet floor, illuminating the five cases in which these precious works are displayed. Overhead the elegant rotunda ceiling presides over the space. It’s a scene that reminds of comments made by Lucille Lewin, one of the exhibiting artists. Discussing her participation in this show…

Fifteen years ago, at an age when most people are considering retirement, the Japanese born, British potter, Takeshi Yasuda relocated his studio from England to China. It is remarkable, but consistent with this artist’s enquiring nature, that after over forty years of working with stoneware he should take on porcelain as well as the challenges faced by foreigners in modern China. In doing so he is producing some of the most exciting work of his career. Yasuda’s work has always reflected a lifelong obsession with the soft sensuousness of wet plastic clay. The finished pieces always refer us back to the freshness of the initial forming with fluid rims and bases, plump generous volumes and shiny or slightly matt glazes that evoke the glistening watery beauty of a newly thrown…

The art of ceramics and pottery has a great tradition in all civilizations spanning centuries yet ceramic art is one of the most neglected fields of art in South Asia. The Sindh region of Pakistan is well-known around the globe for its stunning handicrafts related to Sindhi art and ancient art genres. The history of ceramics in the Sindh region passes through the rise and decline of the ancient subcontinental Indus Civilization1, one of the oldest forms being the art of Kashi tiles. The term Kashi translates as painting. It is a Persian word that can be used for all types of glazed pottery, but in Sindh, this term is associated with the ancient Kashi tiles.2 The process of making Kashi tiles is called Kashi Kari, and the artisans who…