THE PHYSICAL CERAMIC OBJECT - SHARED SPACE AND TIME

In current times, within the Covid-19 pandemic, we spend more time than usual attempting to communicate and connect via virtual means, specifically from home. Furthermore, the things we choose to fill our home environment with now, surround us much more of the time than they did prior to the pandemic. Most utilitarian objects of mundane everyday rituals are held much more, perhaps two or even three times a day when making food and having every meal at home. It is possible that we have taken the time to experiment and to use things in a different way, perhaps to seek out and use the proper vessel or implement for the task or meal at hand. To have and use a very specific type of ceramic object was a speciality of the Victorian era, some such as tea cups with moustache guards or fan shaped dishes used to arrange and serve asparagus have been lost in contemporary times, the emphasis is less on doing the ‘proper’ thing and more on convenience. However, a few of these more niche items can still be found in most kitchens, the egg cup being one example.

Fig. 5 shows A new copy of an old egg cup, bought in Stoke-on-Trent. Little about it has changed from earlier examples21 and despite being a mass produced item it still relates to the hand of its maker. The cup has an unruly scrawl on its underside, perhaps the mark of its maker, more human and free than the blue transfer print design on its surface, the clay is formed exactly as intended however, small and perfectly cast from a mould, it is one of many, the faults of black scrawl and smudged blue are the thing that make this object an individual, and the fact that it has been selected and brought home by me, a souvenir of my visit to the place where it was produced.

This type of small printed object from Spode is not unique, rather it comes from the age of mechanical reproduction,22 the process is made for mass consumption, it serves as a replica of its Chinese hand painted predecessor. Nevertheless, it still tells a story of place and time.

The egg cup, in itself, as an object, provides some sort of stability in the current isolated and uncertain times. Often the first meal of the day, the egg itself provides structure, it is a marker of time. However, it was hard to find eggs at the start of lock down, so the eggcup sat on the shelf, much like those museum objects dislocated or detached from its prior use, a reminder of the strange situation we find ourselves in. In this exploration of past lives and present reality, it is a poignant reminder that we

21 V&A, ‘Search the Collections: Ceramics egg cup’, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?offset=15&limit=15&narrow=1&extrasearch=&q=Ceramics+egg+cup&commit=Search&quality=0&objectnamesearch=&placesearch=&after=&before=&namesearch=&materialsearch=&mnsearch=&locationsearch= (accessed 10 July 2020) 22 Walter Benjamin, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. (London: Penguin Group, 1936)

cannot predict exactly the journey we will take through life, what will be essential to us and what will fall into disuse. Who could have guessed, a few weeks ago, that I would not have the ability to use this egg cup?

The scene upon the side of the egg cup is a landscape of partial reality and partial imagination; it speaks of space and freedom outside the confines of small London flats. At least we have the garden.

Sitting proud upon its stem. Ready and waiting – quietly anticipating the placement of one hot curved brown shell to fall into it’s rim, the perfect fit of an egg completing its form when in use but empty is its status for the moment.

To Hold

To hold, is my purpose,

I sit proud, heightened ever so slightly by stem and foot, Waiting… for the mornings, rare occasions of use, the weeks end, the break in your fast,

Hold me, I am lost amongst the crowd of crockery; bowls, mugs, plates and platters I share the shelf with,

Sometimes, whilst waiting, I am placed inside the concave void of my neighbour, an attempt to save space…create space,

Bring me out, Place me upon the flat plane of your plate, create space for me, space for use, space for us, I can hold.

This souvenir of place and time has taken on new meaning, its humble status as an everyday, utilitarian object brings it closer to my current mode of being; at home, inside, repeating the same

daily rituals of simplified and restricted living. The egg cup has also acquired some neighbours during this time of isolation; small shards of ceramic, found discarded amongst weeds and dirt in the garden. Used once again for containment, I place each shard I find in the egg cup; a small section of a tea cup handle, a milky bone china curved shard, a small section of the foot-ring from the base of a small dish.

Other fragments have the minute surface detail of copper plate transfer print in cobalt blue, which sets them aside from the rest. There is one piece in particular that has a diamond grid pattern on it, part of the rim of an object, which I have managed to match to a pattern from the Spode factory in Stoke.

Shortly before lockdown, I made a trip to Stoke-on-Trent to visit the Spode factory and learn about copper plate transfer printing. I met Paul Holdway, a trustee of Spode ,who was previously master engraver there during the 1980s and 90s, just prior to the collapse of the ceramic industry in the UK and Spode’s closure in 2009. He showed me the archives of engraved copper plates and demonstrated the printing process to me; explaining that during the trial period of becoming an engraver’s apprentice you would have had to repeat practice patterns and plates over and over again before being trusted with a plate that would be used to create a complete pattern for production. The old practice plates have this same fragmented quality of ceramic shards, small sections of designs floating around, detached from one another. Like the found shards, elements of the patterns shown in fig. 6 can be found embedded within finished designs on ceramic objects displayed at Spode.

Fig. 6 Photograph taken by Ella Porter, Engraver’s Practice Plate, Spode Museum Trust, Stoke-on-Trent, 2020

Fragments, like pattern, have the ability to let the mind wander. The snippets of image on the shards surface often have a logical continuation; the curve of a shard might imply which part of an object it belonged to, while the pattern printed upon it may be designed specifically to fit a particular curve, for example a border pattern created to fit the rim of a dish, like the small fragment I found during lockdown in the garden, that now sits in the egg cup.

The intricacy of the detail in my found fragments is typical of this lost transfer printing process. Popular during the eighteen-hundreds and dating back to the sixteenth century this method was used to mass produce both the patterns that decorated the surface of table wear as well as the marks on the underside of objects, used to promote and identify its origin.23 24 This method was largely used at the time and for a long while after, well before digital ceramic transfer equivalents were available. The decoration and more specifically marks on a piece of ceramic from this time are what allow us to accurately trace them, but it is also the minute detail that in this instance feels so important. If a printed item were to fracture and break, as many will and have, then the small fragments left behind are still relatively easy to trace back to a specific object, place and time due to their distinct detail, thus making this specific element of ceramic production extremely important in understanding the history behind these objects.

23 Friend, G.T. ‘Metal Engraving’, in Fifteen Craftsmen on Their Crafts, ed. John Farleigh (London: The Sylvan Press, 1945) P. 25-30 24 William Chaffers, Handbook of Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain, (London: Reeves and Turner 1906)