INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The ceramic artefact lends itself well to taking on a voice and becoming an embodied object. An initial point to note is that the language used to describe ceramics is comparative to that used to describe the human body as ceramic objects may have a belly, foot, neck and lip, and even the mass of clay used to create the forms is described as the clay body.3

‘it is no accident that we, as well as other peoples, have always used anthropomorphic terms to designate these different parts of the pot, which is seen to be, in some sense, a symbolic analogue of the human body. There is thus a powerful element of somatic suggestion in the proportions and relations between the parts of pots, which can only be felt, not really described…Only rarely do pots have heads. But they all have ‘lips’.’4

Considering the relationship of ceramic form and human body it is not so far a leap to be imagining the voice of the ceramic artefact. Of course inanimate objects cannot literally think for themselves but the qualities these objects possess not just through man made form but through the traces of time that they have captured and preserved, mean they speak of the past.5 Like no other material, clay’s fired state acts as a time capsule, capturing the moments of touch that produced its form, a direct connection between its viewer and its maker. The human body carries its own genetic clues and in a similar way such artefacts are experienced complete with inherent marking. Ceramic artefacts can survive for thousands of years bearing the evidence of their creation. No other medium can provide this connection to the past in a more tangible way.

Life-Cycle of The Ceramic Artefact

I invite you to consider that there are six possible life stages for a ceramic object. The first being its material body - clay - coming from the earth, this raw material pre-exists the object and is fundamentally the main unchanged element that creates what will be the ceramic artefact. The second is the processes of creation of the

3 Philip Rawson, Ceramics (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) Body images p. 100. 4 Ibid. p. 100. 5 Leonie Hannan and Sarah Longair, History through material culture. (Manchester: Manchester University press, 2017)

object; other raw materials that are added to the clay making it workable and stable in firing, the way it is melded and formed into shape, the surface treatment of the form it becomes. The third stage is the firing process; bisque firings and earthenware or stoneware glaze firings that it will go through - fixing it in time, this is when the object shifts from clay to ceramic.6 The fourth stage is its acquisition; where it ends up, who owns it, buys it, uses it, etc. The fifth is the moment at which it is lost or broken and discarded, detached from its intended place. Finally, the sixth stage is that of re-discovery, when the object is found, re-homed, re-acquired, collected and possibly displayed.

It is during this sixth stage in the cycle that I am making contact, in some form, with my chosen artefacts. However, when faced with the problem of not having physical access to all of the objects I am studying, I must rely on the visual and written documentation that accompanies them. This brings up many problems when hoping to read the object in a sensory engaged way, more and more I find myself relying on previous experience of handling similar objects.

Delicate, light, smooth, almost shell-like porcelain forms of containment. Their materiality containing their past, whilst their form stays open to holding the future. Until broken a pot has this possibility of containing another thing,7 when broken it shifts…fragments take on the role of evidence, clues to a past life.

6 Philip Rawson, Ceramics (London: Oxford University Press, 1971) Part II techniques. P. 23. 7 Alison Britton, Seeing Things: Collected writing on Art, Craft and Design. (London: Occasional Papers, 2013.) p. 234.