Introduction to the Project - Exploring the Archive
Aberystwyth University’s new Arts Council Wales and Potclays funded ‘Incubator project’ invites four young ceramic artists based in Wales to create a new body of work in response to pieces from the Aberystwyth ceramics collection. Alongside ceramists Hannah Walters, Nathan Mullis and Ross Andrews I will be creating a series of new pieces for an exhibition in the ceramics collection gallery at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in January 2020.
My focus will be on the pots of Frances Richards (1869-1931). Despite being one of the earliest pioneers of the studio pottery movement in the UK, very little is known about the life of this woman. In Sarah Riddick’s book Pioneer Studio Pottery: The Milner-White Collection it is explained that Richards lived most of her life at various addresses in Highgate, London, producing pots in isolation and firing from a kiln in her garden. In October I visited a couple of places where she used to live and work, firstly, 33 Archway Road where she lived from 1901 and 178 Archway Road where she was exhibiting from by 1915. Jill Rutter’s article Finding Frances Richards was a helpful resource in identifying some of Richards’s influences, particularly Chinese Sung Dynasty ceramics.
Last month I also had the chance to handle some of her pieces at Aberystwyth Arts Centre and view the four pots she has on display at the V and A. Seeing her work in the collection, it felt clear to me that above form and shape, what Richards was really passionate about was surface pattern and texture of glazes. With the limited resources she would have had at that time there is an incredible amount of variation in colour and texture to the surfaces of her pots. While there is care and precision to her earthenware forms, they feel to me more of a canvas onto which she can experiment with surfaces - mottled, crawling and contrasting glazes painted on top of one another.
Trying to get a sense of the personality of this enigmatic person, it was the sense of joy and care in the application of her surfaces which resonated with me above else. Her majolica work is especially interesting, the repetitive mark making has an almost mathematical, meditative quality. Like Richards, I am a thrower and the lidded jars in the collection are of great interest to me too as I make lots of lidded forms myself. I understand that satisfaction that comes with making a well-fitting lid and it’s clear that Richards shared the same joy. I find this duality between the precision and the exuberant, experimental decoration on her work very exciting and it will serve as a foundation for my own response to her pieces.
On a more personal note, this project’s aim is to give us new graduates a kind of ‘trial run’ at creating a body of work in response to a real world brief, a first go for myself at juggling bills paying part-time jobs with my ceramic practice. Already I’ve come up against challenges, time constraints in particular and the challenge of learning how to create blog content in Squarespace as opposed to the WordPress I used previously. I’ll be updating my progress here over the coming weeks.