Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 122 i Ceramics: Art and Perception

Walter Benjamin’s insight seems particularly apposite to the life of a potter. In English ‘trace’ can refer to vestigial signs of a past event such as the surface of thrown or turned clay that record the gesture and tools that produced them. But it can also mean the action of following such marks, as one does when handling a finished pot, fingering the line of the rim or foot, feeling its texture; a tactile affirmation of the potter’s intention. It can mean to follow as in copy, either oneself as in repetition throwing or the admired work of others, as with tradition. It can mean a minute quantity such as a tiny amount of an element found in a mineral that will significantly change the appearance and behaviour of a…

Some of my earliest recollections include examining myself in a mirror and mentally separating my physical attributes. Growing up in India, my appearance was frequently commented on and either praised, or criticised, which is normal in our culture (Chandavarkar, 2023). My self-examination was similar to Albrecht Durer’s (1528) anatomical woodcut cartoon of the ideal nude female figure: a fragmented construct. He believed that taking different parts of the body, an illustrated collage of sorts – the face of one, the breasts of another, the legs of a third, the shoulders of a fourth, and so on – would glorify man (Berger, 1972). However, the image I viewed of my own body was not as a complete whole. I was compelled to focus on certain parts, assessed through the lens of…

Nurturing, inspiring and showcasing new talent are at the heart of what we do at the British Ceramics Biennial – and have been since we started our work back in 2009. The most prominent way that we do this is through our platform for emerging ceramic artists, Fresh, which is one of the flagship exhibitions in the Biennial. Fresh brings together the work of 25 emerging artists chosen by an expert panel, and although in some ways it is one of the more conventional components of the Biennial programme, it gives an invaluable opportunity for artists right at the beginning of their careers to show their work. Fresh celebrates artists at a launch moment in their practice. It showcases a cross-section of emerging talent and celebrates artistic discovery, and it…

There has long been a passionate interest in collecting Australian pottery. Initially led by dedicated collectors and researchers who published books and curated ground breaking exhibitions on all aspects of the topic, it was roughly divided into ‘art pottery’ of the 20th century, and commercial potteries during both the 19th and 20th centuries. Porcelain making was considered as technically too difficult to pursue, especially as the simpler manufacture of pottery had proved so difficult, barely making any headway in Victoria or Australia. However, amongst the earthen-ware potters that migrated to Australia, a few had been employed in porcelain works, mostly from Europe. Some of those in Victoria were Samuel Bedson (19th century) and William Milner (early 20th century), but the industry really exploded when industrial porcelain was needed to make…

While the evolution of contemporary Nigerian ceramics practice can be traced back to traditional art practices, a differing set of factors influence its trajectory. The current inclusion of ceramic art into Nigerian higher education curricula is an extension of the foundation laid by Michael Cardew at the Pottery Training Center in Abuja in 1951. Traditionally, ceramic art production in Nigeria “clutched somewhat dogmatically to longheld convention”1 where the clay medium was used to produce cups, jugs, mugs and flower vases, among others, mainly for functional and utilitarian purposes. However, in the late 90s, a paradigm shift occurred with some ceramists breaking free from traditional modes of production. For example, Christ Echeta and Ozioma Onuzulike began adding decorative glaze and engobe to visually activate their works. They also created conceptual pieces…

Historically, Chinese people have believed that illustrations encouraged morality, discipline, and favorable conduct in children. This ideology gave birth to a generation of images based on child-rearing, with earlier works depicting fictional characters, such as those from Lie-Nyu Zhuan by western Han Dynasty writer Liu Xiang. Currently, the earliest known porcelain pieces depicting children and women are: illustrations of boys holding lotus flowers painted using brown underglaze under a celadon glaze, and portraits of women on celadon-glazed forms painted with a brown-green underglaze, respectively. Although separate pictures of children and women were present on Tang Dynasty Changsha porcelain, the exact period in which both children and women are presented together in illustrations of child-rearing remains debatable. However, evident in the Yuan Dynasty is a multi-coloured vase preserved by the Saint…

Onta is a potter’s dream destination. Internationally renowned, Onta (also known as Onda), is a mountainside village which lies in the centre of Sarayama, a valley in Kyushu’s Oita Prefecture, Japan. Within its picturesque rural setting, there are just 10 families that keep the tradition of a particular style of pottery making alive using only hand techniques, clay sourced locally and timber sustainably maintained and harvested from nearby to fire their kilns – practices that have remained unchanged for the past 300 years. The village is famous for Onta-yaki (each village throughout Japan is identified by its point of origin, combined with the word yaki, meaning 'ware') – robust, functional stoneware with a distinctive decorative style and for the sound of the clay crushers, the kara-usu, that create a rhythmic,…

I have been working with Bone China for more than 20 years, and have mainly used it as a vehicle for decoration with soluble salts which I have been working with for most of that time. Living in South Africa, finding consistent materials is often a problem. When I began my exploration of Bone China, the first recipe I tested was the standard recipe that is often a kick-off point in testing it, i.e., 50% Bone Ash, 25% Potash Feldspar and 25% China clay. I made it by substituting Calcium Triphosphate for the bone ash, and Serena (a local Kaolin) – which is the closest local equivalent to china clay – for the china clay. This worked particularly well for me, and I used it for all my work for several…

Until recently, there have only been two institutions in Italy classified as ‘Istituto Raro’ (Unique Institutions): The Antonio Stradivari International School of Violin Making in Cremona, and The Institutum Statuaria Ars Carrara Pietro Tacca IPSAM in Carrara for marble sculpting. Both are extremely exclusive in their own right. The former celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. The establishment of the latter dates back to the end of the 19th century. The singularity of the specializations of these internationally renowned institutions categorically reduces any applications from the ordinary parameters of the Italian school system, allowing them to maintain their autonomy of management regardless of the number of students enrolled in their faculties. From March 2017, Italy will recognize a third institution with the 'Raro' predicate. This is the Istituto Superiore Giovanni…

Jane Yang-D’Haene was born in South Korea and came to New York in 1984 to study architecture. Now Brooklynbased, she began to work in clay only in 2016 and is using it for tableware, lighting, furniture and vessels of the sort in this exhibition. Up front in the narrow gallery, to make an impression on the entering viewer, were five large untitled vessels, each on its own pedestal and each around 50 cm tall. The impression was not so much power or elegance but rather harshness to the point of savagery. While the gallery press release says the vessels were inspired by moon jars, they are less spherical and tend to finish with a wide upward-thrusting rim. The association is further undercut by her emphatic surface treatments of both texture…

This is an indispensable book. For anyone interested in contemporary Japanese ceramics it offers an indepth look at the setting and the players through interviews with artists and dealers. Traditions, training, new ideas and opportunities are disclosed with an insider’s knowledge. The authors are Alice and Halsey North, a married couple who ran an advisory business for non-profits, collected Japanese ceramics, and were long based in New York City, and Louise Allison Cort, the celebrated curator of ceramics at the Freer Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., now emeritus. Both Alice North and Louise Cort speak Japanese, so they were able to conduct the interviews in the artists’ own language and they have a long familiarity with the field. One thing that makes the book curious, though,…

More than a decade after her death, Toshiko Takaezu’s (1922-2011) stature is still climbing – higher even than during her lifetime. One pot sold for $500 at auction in 1999; last year a similar one sold for $550,000. Her third posthumous retrospective is being organized by the Noguchi Museum (to tour) for 2024 and a recent one at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was widely attended and written about, including in the New York Times. All this followed the enormous honor of her presence in the US Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Despite much of her career having been spent in the close-knit world of American studio ceramics, with prior surveys at the American Craft Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Gallery of Honolulu and elsewhere,…

“I work these motifs, or rather the motion in them, into the ceramic piece, so that they, without imposing themselves as imitations of nature, imperceptibly rest in the ceramic and thus elicit, through the memory of something once seen, a pleasant emotional response in the beholder.”– Salto’s Keramik (Salto’s Ceramics), 1930 “In these smouldering, these gushing vases the stoneware bursts into song, and for what else, actually, should clay be used? For play when the heart swells, and for relief from misery.”– Den spirende Stil (The Sprouting Style), 1949 “I am holding it in my hand, the bowl, the only bowl which is me, myself. Smooth inside, fluted on the outside, functional as a fruit bowl and simple as a pilgrim’s tool. It is a truly great thing to make…

As one’s practice evolves, the dynamic is driven by the excitement of the next piece of work, the next firing, the next exhibition, one seldom stops to reflect on the journey taken. So it was for me until a chance conversation with a publisher at a book launch a year ago reminded me that I had been on this path for fifty years and the idea to celebrate this in book form was hatched. Through positive discussions with the publisher, Unicorn, and my partner the artist Rob Kesseler, we quickly formulated a structure for the book that drew upon the many sources of inspiration found on my travels between Corfu, Greece, my place of birth, and London where I established my practice. As I suggest in the introduction to the…

It is widely known that Sōetsu Yanagi tried to establish a uniquely eastern aesthetic, different from western modern aesthetics, through Buddhist thinking. His craft theory, called ‘Mingei Theory’, was established through the concept of ‘nondualistic beauty’ as detailed in The Dharma Gate of Beauty, written three years before he died. The discovery that an unknown potter created the Joseon tea bowls provided Yanagi with an object through which his theory could be substantiated. This was because he identified religious experiences with aesthetic experiences by associating ‘non-dualistic beauty’ with the concept of ‘other-power faith’ in Buddhism. This article uses other works to substantiate Yanagi’s controversial ideas of ‘non-dualistic beauty’ through consideration of the works of Korean ceramist Hun Chung Lee. In this, consideration is given to the concept of ‘otherness’ and…

Q: What are the green specks in my moist clay? At some point almost every potter will experience mold growth in moist clay. Mold occurs when microscopic spores attach to clay or other transfer mediums either in the mining, storage, processing, mixing, or moist clay stages. Mold growth needs moisture on the clay surface, and in the immediate atmosphere – all conditions found in moist clay packaged in a plastic bag. Susceptibility to mold growth can also be influenced by the permeability of the plastic bag containing the clay. Under the right conditions of moisture, warmth and water pH, mold continues to colonize the exposed clay surface. Over time it can penetrate below the clay surface. Aside from visual observations, often the first indication of mold growth are odors coming…