Our chosen Redlist craft- Ceramics(Pottery)
Our chosen Redlist craft is ceramics and pottery, it is
currently a viable craft that is decreasing over the years, this is due to
industrial manufacturers and lower demand. We are drawn to the
fragmentation of ceramics, this came to our attention through the Japanese
tradition Kintsugi and a trip to the Manchester museum where we saw Roman
pottery that had been damaged over time.
I was glad to choose Ceramics/ pottery for
my Radcliffe Redlist because I have always been interested and quite curious
about the way you can manipulate clay into whatever shape you please just like
fabrics can be manipulated. I remember making things out of clay to play in
India as we didn’t have toys provided. My friends and I used to make Indian
style food vessels and pretend to cook with them.
People found out they could dig clay to form into shapes of
vessels and other figurines from the time of 24,000 BC. As I understand it they
mixed water and clay in the right proportions and then fired in kilns to make
it usable.
Around 10,000 BC India and Mesopotamia
invented tiles and proper functional vessels were made around this time as
well.
Around 8000BC they discovered glass by
mistake by overheating pottery with sand combined with soda in the kilns showed
a glaze on the pottery, glass wasn’t produced separately from ceramics until
1500 BC.
It was in the 16th century they
started to mass produce on an industrial scale because they developed better
materials, such as refractories, which keep their strength at very high
temperature and could be used in the kilns, as well as for the manufacture of
coke, cement, and chemicals.
I watched a video made by Jane
Perryman (2012) in India which showed a traditional way of pottery work through
stages. It was fascinating to see the processes in a village where everyone had
their own job to do but worked together.
Two ceramic artists who interested me are Kate
Haywood and Grayson Perry.
Kate Haywood
has an exhibition at the Manchester art Gallery (23 Feb- 7Oct 2018) which we
went to see as a group. Haywood is a recently graduated ceramicist and I found
it interesting the way she linked ceramics and textile together, which is what I
want to investigate in more detail.
Grayson
Perry is known for his Ceramic Vases, Large scaled tapestries and cross dressing.
All his work revolves around Identities either about him or other people. This
work in the style of Kintsugi was inspired by the cabinet minister, Chris
Huhne, who was jailed for “perverting the course of justice”
In this unit, our group is also interested
in linking pottery into textiles through breaking vessels or pottery and fixing
it using gold paint in a Japanese style (Kintsugi). I have been to block
printing and Pfaff workshops and experimented with tie dye which I’d like to
connect with ceramics. We are looking to
go to Stoke-on-Trent the home of English Ceramics, where we plan to investigate
the social side of the industry. This will widen our research and knowledge
into why ceramics and pottery are on the Redlist.
It’s been interesting working as a group, because
the ideas come from everyone but sometimes the ideas keep changing and it can
get quite confusing to know what we are following. It was interesting to hear the talks by Silo
Studio and Dr Noki and to think about the value of collaboration. I do really
prefer working by myself as well but it has been good to get to know other students
on the course.
This is our inspiration board showing
the colour theme and ceramics ideas
https://depts.washington.edu/matseed/mse_resources/Webpage/Ceramics/ceramichistory.htm 13 March 2018
Perryman, J 2012 Traditional Pottery of India – Kutch,
video recording, viewed 13 March 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxT1oA_Zk6A
Brown, M 2014 Grayson Perry vase with Chris Huhne Motifs
depicts ‘audacious default man’ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/21/grayson-perry-chris-huhne-default-man-vase-national-portrait-gallery
