IC:Innovative Craft Blog

Of porcelain and pots

Posted Monday 10 November 2008, 10:11am

Amanda Game writes:

Clare Twomey (www.claretwomey.com) installed her wall piece at Dovecot on Thursday and Friday. The shift of scale from Jerwood Space to Edinburgh has been fascinating – there is an elongated band of porcelain dust rather than a complete wall and subtler details of texture are already apparent. It will be interesting to see what Edinburgh hands make of it. Both Clare and I feel excited by the result. Also read her printed Conversations. Apparently we speak on average 9,000 words in an hour. This statistic haunts me – quite a sizeable essay being lost into the ether. Except she captured it. We plan to explore the spoken word in Edinburgh in December too. The Scottish potter Will Levi Marshall has been invited to talk about the work of the Edward Marshall Trust on 9 December: other ideas in the planning. 

Meawhile, I contrasted, in my mind, Clare’s exploration of porcelain in space with a very different exploration by the older Australian artist Gwynn Hanssen Piggott. Having finally unpacked three beautiful bowls acquired from the recent Scottish Gallery show, I positioned them carefully under an attic window. I was rewarded this morning by brilliant winter sunlight lifting and animating each shade of white, creating a mesmerising symphony of tone. I found the following words written by Gwynn on the web (www.ceramicstoday.com):

‘Beauty, and our response to it, remains a mystery.But, it seems to me that, in the alchemy of making, the pot becomes subtly humanised. It is as though a kind of knowing – a history of understanding, and a sort of longing is translated, through care and consideration, and an intimate connecting with the stuff under our fingers…into a form with an independent life.  With its own power to move.’

Not a bad thought to carry forward as we install the rest of Jerwood Contemporary Makers.