Paul_Scott_-_academic_info_on_pieces

Paul Scott The Scottish Gallery Cumbrian Blue(s) On Cracks, Blooms and Chips Contemporary attitudes to the re-use of existent material are generally very positive - re-cycling wood for example in contemporary furniture has become commonplace, and the patina of age a pre-requisite for selling much 'Country Living' type craft. If it does seem to be less acceptable with chipped, cracked or crazed ceramics then I'm not exactly sure why - perhaps its because Antiques Road Show valuers frown upon them. However, I habitually collect glazed tableware - from e-bay, junk and antique shops. Some of it may have crazed glazing, some may be cracked, chipped, or the gold lustre worn from the edges. At first I was reluctant to use these pieces in work for sale, being aware that they are seen by some as flaws and devaluations, but over time I have grown very fond of these imperfections - I realized that it is because they evidence the object’s history. For me these characteristics are no longer flaws or reasons to reject the form - in fact quite the opposite - they allude to the object's previous life, it has already been used and handled, it already has a history. For me this evidence of wear is an enhancement to a piece. When re-working the ready made I usually acknowledge and bring attention to the mark, chip or crack. If it is on the rim of a plate or the lip of a jug I will fill in with lustre so it is quite obvious. Crazed glaze and dirty cracks often fuse in the kiln with unexpected results within the glaze - I usually really like these - a bloom of grey or or pink on a plate or bowl adds to their richness. These uncontrollable marks and fissures also often allude to the conceptual reasoning behind certain works.

Paul Scott, December 2102

Cumbrian Blue(s) Spode Works Closed Set of five plates

In July 2009, I was given permission to visit the closed Spode Works in Stoke.

Whilst there I was allowed to collect and take away a small quantity of abandoned tableware. I also took photographs of the derelict site. It was a sad poignant experience. I well remember the site as a thriving working factory and recall my meetings over the years - with Robert Copeland, Paul Drakaway and Trevor Drurose in the engraving department as I researched my book Ceramics and Print, then doing my own research (funded by the Arts Council) to investigate industrial print archives - at the Spode Museum Trust with Pam Wooliscroft. I recall the ‘connoisseur tour’, buying white-ware and seconds to work on. Although these research periods in Spode were relatively fleeting - they were memorable.

After the visit in July 2009 I made a series of artworks from the collected tableware. Many of the found plates were covered with unknown dried substances (presumably once liquids), some were moldy and others simply dusty. I began to explore how I could use these industrial remnants, at first simply firing the coated pieces to see what happened. Some of them disintegrated in the kiln into razor sharp shards. In others the dust or mould simply vanished, burnt away in the kiln, but on some forms the dust particles maybe glaze or ceramic pigments, rust fallen from factory roof beams, or copper from electrical fittings - have fused in the glaze, vitrified evidence of abandonment.

Some plain bone china plates were cleaned up and used as the vehicle for a series of in-glaze screen-prints depicting the factory in its death throws.

The first pieces made as a result of the visit were first exhibited as an installation at the Potteries Museum as part of the first British Ceramics Biennial in the autumn of 2009. On their return to my studio the individual pieces making up the installation have been gradually reworked - mainly with the addition of gold lustre.

The Victoria and Albert Museum bought one of the casseroles at Collect 2011 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) - Spode Works Closed. In-glaze decal on Spode’s Italian porcelain casserole dish (39cm x 30cm x 7cm) salvaged from kiln area (marked Made in Czech Republic). Paul Scott 2009/10. Collection of the V&A.

Five large bone china plates feature images of the abandoned factory (photographed July 2009) filtered through the classic Italian pattern. They include: Factory - one of the buildings of the old factory Engraving Workshop - a view of the abandoned Engraving studio Murray Curvex - a room with discarded ‘Murray Curvex’ stamps or ‘bombs’ used to decorate tableware Kiln - the tall kiln chimney Shops Closed - the closed gates declaring the Spode Shops closed.

The border pattern is formed from the from the main gates and the sign above them.

Most of the other objects are from the famous Italian pattern so associated with Spode, or the Willow pattern.

One small porcelain soup bowl - shows two printed labels in melted cobalt blue. paper labels found on objects in the factory indicating their origin - in China. Back-stamps on other elements of the installation indicate that the final output of the factory was indeed cosmopolitan - including tableware from the Czech Republic and Portugal.

Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) - Spode Works Closed. In-glaze decal on Spode’s Italian porcelain casserole dish (30cm x 23cm x 7cm) salvaged from kiln area (marked Made in Portugal). Paul Scott 2009/10.

Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) - Spode Works Closed, Kiln. In-glaze decal on Spode’s Italian porcelain casserole dish (39cm x 30cm x 7cm) salvaged from kiln area. Paul Scott 2009/10.

At the dawning of the age of print media Spode’s innovative printed landscape patterns on ceramics created an iconic ceramic genre. Its decline in the new era of digital media is characteristic of our age - not restricted to Stoke on Trent, but replicated in many towns and cities across Britain, Europe and North America. Spode Works Closed is a commemorative for Spode, and for the wider loss of manufacturing, skills and knowledge which continue to haemorrhage away.

Paul Scott May 2011

Tea Service - The Cockle Pickers Willow Pattern The quintessentially English ‘cup of tea’ and the tea service are inextricably linked with Britain’s development of the slave trade. Bowls made in Staffordshire, held slave produced sugar from the Caribbean, making palatable the exotic bitter infusion of tea from China and India. It was appropriate therefore that in 1787 Josiah Wedgwood one of the leading ceramic industrialists of the time began production of what was to become a series of anti-slavery ceramics. Jasper-ware cameos featured the image of a kneeling black male slave in chains surrounded by the legend am I not a slave and a brother?1 Over the next eighty years variations of this iconic design graced the surface of a huge variety of ceramic forms as the disseminating, campaigning power of print moved from paper into other media.

The legacies of the slave trade include the immense wealth generated for the British economy, its contemporary manifestation in the architecture of our towns, stately homes and gardens, as well as in arts and culture throughout Britain - and our humble cup of tea (or coffee).

In spite of its formal legal abolition, slavery is still with us in the twenty-first century manifesting itself in a number of ways, but almost always involving illegal immigrants forced to work or live in appalling conditions by gang masters. On February 5, 2004 twenty-one of these contemporary slaves, Chinese cockle pickers, far from their homes, were drowned in Morecambe Bay, so close to Cumbria, and our homes.

Many of those killed in Morecambe bay originated from the Fujian province of China which known for its production of Oolong tea. A tea service therefore seemed a very appropriate form to create a contemporary comment on the legacy of Britain’s abolition of the Slave trade in 1807.

Basing the design on the ubiquitous Willow Pattern I have created a Cockle Pickers tea service.

The Willow Pattern designed in Stoke on Trent in the early 1800’s, but alluding to the oriental and the exotic is the most commonly produced printed ceramic pattern ever produced, and so is familiar to millions the world over…

In the Cockle Pickers Willow, the pattern is mostly erased as the tide flows into Morecambe Bay (lake district hills in the distance) drowning those harvesting the shelled delicacies. The symbolism in the tea service is multi faceted: Semiotic, form, image, material and colour based • Cockle shells are integrated in the border pattern, and inside some forms • Replacing geometric borders, are patterns of the bodies of African slaves taken from the iconic engraving in Thomas Clarkson’s book History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.2 • Inside the sugar bowl and pearl-ware cup, a small icon of the kneeling slave has been adapted from a print on an 1830 Drab-ware cup and saucer.

• The icon also appears as part of the stamp on the base of objects in the set.

• Swallows are often depicted in the Willow pattern. Meaning a safe return home they are a popular tattoo for sailors. Ironically our victims of the

slave trade, historical and contemporary never saw their homes again.

• The tea set includes Royal Worcester bone china, Royal Copenhagen porcelain (Denmark was also involved in the slave trade), a tea caddy by Jane Smith, and a pearl-ware cup from the early nineteenth century probably produced when African slavery was still big business.

• Blue prints are held within gold rims. In the early nineteenth century Romantic commentators associated colour with the three social divisions of nobles (gold), freemen (red), and slaves (blue).3 This contemporary Willow reminds us that interwoven in the richness of our everyday lives are the legacies of our ancestor’s enthusiastic embrace of the slave trade and that slavery is still with us but in a less obvious guise.4 For more information, see: www.antislavery.org.

That I had used the ‘flooding’ device before on an unrelated artefact was not problematic – historically potters’ engravers re-cycled, re-used and re-configured patterns and designs very much in the way that musicians re-record, re-use and re-interpret their own songs for different occasions and contexts. The sampling of image and pattern evident in the Cockle Pickers Series is also structurally and formally akin to sampling and re-working of existing popular music that has gone on from the early days of the Beatles through to contemporary Rap artists - who collage existing portions of pre-recorded sound to create the new.

Of its constituent parts - assorted tableware including Royal Worcester (teapot jug and sugar bowl), Royal Copenhagen porcelain (plates cups and saucers) handbuilt tea caddy - only the antique pearlware cups were acquired specifically for purpose. The other elements formed part of the eclectic mix of tableware that is the store within my studio. These have been erratically collected over a number of years providing ready vehicles for appropriation. Sometimes they are handled and used in the kitchen for years before disappearing into the kiln layered with in-glaze decal. Their collection typifies the ambiguous non-specific nature of artistic investigation - they have been collected because they might serve a purpose, which at the at the time of acquisition is by no means clear.

The Cockle Pickers Tea Service was created in an edition of three and featured in the following exhibitions: Legacy - Cumbria Institute of the Arts/Beacon Museum Whitehaven, 200 Years: Slavery Now - Bluecoat Liverpool and Gallery Oldham (both 2007) as well as Teas Up at Contemporary Applied Arts6 London in 2008. In addition the service has been on display in Manchester City Art Gallery’s 21st Century Showcase May 2008 – May 2009. Three items linked to the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade were already on permanent display in the Gallery of Craft and Design in the Telling Tales case - a Wedgwood medallion, cast iron tobacco box lid and pin cushion based on the referenced drabware icon and the legend ‘Am I not your sister’.

Alison Copeland explained: ‘In addition to the obvious technical mastery displayed in his approach to ceramic practices and the unique quality of Scott’s work, the printed wares make strong links with the Gallery’s historic collections of 18th century printed wares. Perhaps just as importantly,

the tragedy of the cockle pickers encapsulated in the tea set was still extremely resonant and last year, in 2008, tied in with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and the Gallery’s programme of highlighting collections with links to the slave trade.’

The Victoria and Albert Museum has purchased a service for use in their new ceramics galleries opening in September 2009. ‘The subject matter is perfect, we are really interested in the way you blend local and global imagery. And of course the tea set forms will be useful to us in many exhibition contexts because it allows us to do comparison and contrast, and it also has that 'double take' quality I was after’.

Cumbrian Blue(s) - Wood fired Trees and Pots Over the past five years I have undertaken a series of wood firings with Nina Hole and Anne Katrine von Bulow in Denmark3 and Hungary.

Soda and salt glazed cups, bowls and plates, together with wood fired trees are the results of these collaborative events.

The wood fired objects play on the methodology of production, the resultant artefact and the words and language used to describe them.

They are also beautiful objects - the flash of flame or soda/salt glaze and the bleeding cobalt print - expressive graphic qualities imbued by fire and process, complemented by gold splash or painted line.

Von Bulow and I have begun to explore the nature of the firing process to bring out the unique graphic qualities that salt or soda firings can imbue, but doing so without losing detail and fidelity. We have found it necessary to challenge traditional firing techniques - developing our own methodologies which involve minimizing ash circulation within the kiln, more controlled, shorter reduction, and careful control of soda and salt application at high temperature.

On the Leach tile: Leach wrote: ‘Patterns may be described as concepts of decoration reduced to their utmost simplicity and significance. They are analogous to melodies in music and proverbs in literature. Their significance is enhanced by directness of personal statement and detracted from by mechanical reproduction, for in such reproductions continuous vital interpretation is lacking, however good the original. That is why well painted pots have a beauty of expression greater than pottery decorated with engraved transfers, stencils or rubber stamps.’

The remediated object Willow after Bernard Leach lays bare the paucity of Leach’s distain for the printed graphic. It is the reaction of stain with fire, ash and glaze that imbues the melodious and proverbial - not necessarily the hand painted, but Leach’s philosophical attachment to the hand made and oriental aesthetic makes him an unsuited commentator

on the industrial heritage of ceramics. He has been thrust into this space by his role as the father of the studio pottery movement which until recently claimed a strangle hold on the contemporary dialogue within British ceramics. His thinking on printed ceramics probably deserve to hold as much influence as mine on the craft pottery movement.

Paul Scott, October 2012 A Willow for Ai Weiwei Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained by plainclothes police officers at Beijing airport on 3 April 2011. He was hooded before being put in a car and driven to secret locations where he was held until his release on June 22.

For a time ‘two officers watched him round the clock, their faces often inches from his, even monitoring him as he slept and insisting he put his hands on top of the blanket. He was not allowed to speak and had to request permission to drink water and use the toilet. "It was immense psychological pressure," a Reuters’ source said. When Ai told police their actions were illegal, officers replied: "Do you know before Liu Shaoqi died, he was holding the constitution?... Talk about illegality, there's no difference between the country that we are in now and the time of the Cultural Revolution." Liu was one of China's top leaders but was purged and died during the brutal political turmoil which Mao Zedong unleashed in the 1960s.....

Even on the day of his release, officers reminded Ai he could still face 10 years in jail for inciting subversion to state power – a vaguely-worded charge often used against dissidents – the source said. He had to agree to conditions including no media interviews, no meetings with foreigners, no use of the internet and no interaction with human rights advocates for one year from his return home.

Ai has given few details of his detention, beyond saying that he experienced "extreme conditions", and says he is not able to give interviews. But he has spoken to media including the Guardian, and attacked the treatment of friends held because of him in several Twitter messages.’

A Willow for Ai Weiwei (Wen Tao, Liu Zhenggang, Zhang Ginseng and Hu Mingfen) was conceived whilst the artist was was in detention. It commemorates his disappearance, and the continuing harassment of his friends and colleagues.

He appears to have been held by the Chinese authorities because of his practice as a contemporary visual artist. As well as campaigning for more openness in Chinese society, through his work Ai Weiwei has also been responsible for a growing awareness in the West of the richness of Chinese art, history and culture. He is a great example of the positive, growing crosscultural activity in Sino-European relations in recent years.

The Willow Pattern was designed in Stoke on Trent in the early part of the nineteenth century. It was loosely based on imported Chinese porcelain with painted landscapes. It is the most commonly produced printed ceramic pattern ever made, and is familiar to millions the world over. Weiwei too has become an international phenomena through his artworks and installations.

All the figures in A Willow For Ai Weiwei have been erased, alluding to the disappearing artist and his friends. Where Weiwei might have been can be seen as a white silhouette in the centre of the bridge as he drops a Han dynasty urn (a reference to one of his earlier artworks). Sunflower seeds are scattered around the platter alluding to his installation in Tate Modern 2010/11.3 The back of the plate also has sunflower seeds and features the spray poster ‘Who’s afraid of Ai Weiwei’ which appeared all over Hong Kong shortly after his detention. Also listed are the names of his friends and colleagues, several of whom remain in police custody. The original makers mark is joined by Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) and Real Art stamps which are signature marks on all my artworks. The Willow plate by an unknown factory is probably nearly nearly 200 years old and was purchased on ebay in 2011.

The artwork is one of a series of Weiwei Willow plates. The first is in the collection of the National Decorative Arts Museum in Oslo, purchased during Ting Tang Trash exhibition at Bergen’s Permanenten Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum in the autumn of 2011, another has recently been acquired by the Arizona State University Art Museum.

Paul Scott October 2012 Three Gorges, After the Dam 2 The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river in China is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. It stretches nearly a mile across and towers 575 feet above the world's third longest river. Its reservoir stretches over 350 miles upstream and forced the displacement of close to 1.9 million people. Construction began in 1994 and was scheduled to take 20 years and over $24 billion to complete. The controversial project has already had immense environmental impact. The Willow Pattern was designed in Stoke on Trent for industrial mass production. It represents an archetypal English view of the oriental, and the exotic; originally alluding to the expensive, hand-painted landscapes on imported Chinese porcelain.

It seemed an appropriate image to use in a work, which concerns the drowning of vast tracts of Chinese landscape, for dubious economic and environmental benefit.

The work uses a digitally altered willow print (from a porcelain factory copperplate archive in Sweden) other extracted images from the willow, to allude to the Chinese, whilst effectively erasing most of the pattern and decorative design by suggesting the floodwaters of the Three Gorges Dam. This is an update, second Three Gorges print/plate and features one of the tourist boats that now ply their trade across the new lake.

The Hartlepool Ghost Ships In 2004 Able UK won an £11m contract to break and recycle 13 US vessels at its Hartlepool yard. It had not however gained the necessary planning permission for the dismantling facilities before the first ships left the US. The Caloosahatchee, Canopus, Compass Island and Canisteo were the first four old supply ships from the defunct US naval fleet, to arrive at Hartlepool in 2005.

Nicknamed the ghost ships, they are said to contain a cocktail of industrial pollutants, and environmental groups on both sides of the Atlantic, have claimed the vessels should have been dismantled in their home country.

English Nature objected to a planning application by Able UK for the creation of a

specialist dry dock to enable dismantling, as it believed the development would harm internationally protected wildlife sites.

Others pointed out that Hartlepool has its own a nuclear power station, and is surrounded by one of the biggest chemical complexes in Europe, and that both these industries have to deal with some of the most dangerous toxic and nuclear elements known to man‌ Since arriving in the UK, the ships remained untouched moored in Hartlepool, as Able continued its fight to gain planning permission which was eventually granted in 2008. The Cumbrian Blue(s) Ghost Ship plate commemorates the arrival of Canisteo in 2004, and the subsequent controversy about its presence in Hartlepool.

Paul Scott, 2011