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Ceramics - Films
Ceramics - Articles
A Brief History: ‘Tomobako’ Japanese Wooden Boxes
In Japan ceramic pots are stored in signed wooden boxes, known as ‘Tomobako’, both for their protection and to display the provenance of the maker.
Presented by British potter Phil Rogers and writer/art critic David Whiting, this video contains archive footage of Japanese potter Ken Matsuzaki signing boxes at his pottery in Japan as well as a demonstration of him tying ribbons around finished boxes during his Goldmark exhibition.
Click here or the image below to view all Ken Matsuzaki work currently available >
Ken Matsuzaki
Ken Matsuzaki was born in 1950 in Tokyo. It was an artistic family – his father was a Nihonga painter and his brother went on to become a...
Jean-Nicolas Gérard: The Potter’s Potter
This documentary follows French slipware potter Jean-Nicolas Gérard as he prepares for his 2013 exhibition at the Goldmark Gallery.
Jean-Nicolas describes himself as an artisan craftsman who, above all, wants his pottery to be used and enjoyed. His work ranges from small mugs, bowls, plates and dishes to large jars and press moulded platters. All are decorated with slip and many with sgraffito and finger marks. He takes the tradition of European slipware and infuses it with elements from modern painting, medieval earthenware and Japanese pottery. In the film we watch him throwing, glazing and decorating and explore the influences that nature and his surrounding landscape have on his pottery.
Click below for a closer look at Jean-Nicolas Gérard’s work >
Jean-Nicolas Gérard
Jean-Nicolas Gérard was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954 and returned to France in 1961. He makes domestic slipware or terre vernissée...
Jean-Nicolas Gérard – Monograph 2013
A 64 page monograph to accompany Gérard’s 2013 exhibition, featuring photographs of Gérard and his pots accompanied by an essay written by David Whiting is available. All photographs by Jay Goldmark.
Jean-Nicolas Gérard
Jean-Nicolas Gérard was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954 and returned to France in 1961. He makes domestic slipware or terre vernissée...
Jean-Nicolas Gérard: 2013 Ceramics Exhibition Video
Widely regarded as the potter’s potter, Gérard makes freely thrown and decorated domestic ware. He talks about his work in this short video, made for the 2013 exhibition.
Click below for a closer look at Jean-Nicolas Gérard’s work >
Jean-Nicolas Gérard
Jean-Nicolas Gérard was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954 and returned to France in 1961. He makes domestic slipware or terre vernissée...
Phil Rogers: A Portfolio
Phil Rogers’ pots inspire ceramic artists and collectors around the world. In this Goldmark publication, Rogers pulls together the sources which have fed his creativity over the years, sharing with us his delight in different pots throughout the ages. With over 120 colour photographs, Rogers highlights the links between his own work and those selected pieces he most admires; from the elegant stoneware of Medieval Europe to the honest, unpretentious quality of the Korean potting tradition.
Phil Rogers
Phil Rogers was born in Newport, Gwent in 1951. He attended Newport and Swansea Colleges of Art and had originally intended to become a...
Jean-Nicolas Gérard by David Whiting
Jean-Nicolas Gérard is one of those rare potters who brings genuine life and gusto to contemporary slipware, investing the tradition of terre vernissée with a fresh and expressive energy unlike any other. He takes the best of slipware’s history in Europe and infuses it with a deep appreciation of other traditions, from expressive Eastern ceramics to modern painting, all influences that contribute to the innate physicality of his pots. It is revealing that in talking of their admiration for Gérard’s work, people may refer not only to a whole range of country pottery, French and otherwise, but perhaps medieval earthenware, and in Japan kilns such as Oribe and potters like Rosanjin, Koie and even Kaneko.
Like these artists Gérard has moved beyond conventional methods. He has moved beyond the overly tutored aspects of making, the craft skills and procedures which every potter needs but which must to some degree be transcended if a pot is to have real vigour. But the wrong kind of individuality can also make it too self-conscious. I recall a conversation with Ewen Henderson in which he discussed the danger of one particular potter slipping into mannerism because of his exaggerated detailing. It is a fine line. But every Gérard piece, while fresh and different, is also controlled – objects which not only show a great understanding of form and the vocabulary of pottery, but also its functionality, its place in the rituals of good food and cooking, in hospitality and living. Pots to make us pause and celebrate.
Born in Brazzaville in the Congo in 1954, Gérard has been based in the south of France for many years, studying ceramics in the late 1970s, training with Jean Biagini at the École des Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence, as well as Clare Bogino. He worked for a short while in stoneware before building his first wood-fired kiln for slipware. Since the early 1980s he has lived and worked in Valensole, a beautiful medieval hilltop village bathed in Provençal light and in summer surrounded by purple seas of lavender. Here is a landscape redolent with the art of Van Gogh and Cézanne, and on the coast with Bonnard and Matisse, a region in which colour has found some of its most potent expression, not only in the strong hues of Post-Impressionism and Fauvisim, but in the luminous creamy yellows, ochres and greens of Provençal pottery.
Jean-Nicholas Gérard’s pots add much to this heritage and to slipware in general. But he also relishes the parallels of expression between terre vernissée techniques and 20th century abstraction, from the collages of Matisse to the paintings of the New York School. There are gestural colorists like Pierre Alechinsky, where line and drawing combine so richly with pigment. Gérard makes the strong visual and physical connection between the painterly slips he uses and the thick liquidity of oil and acrylic. Gérard is in every sense a modern artist, a potter with a touch of Voulkos about him. The work is imbued with a sense of performance, of creative action, of clay and slip as wet fluid substances, more so than most potters I know. The fact that he works in series, gathering together runs of pieces and decorating swiftly from one to another removes the stiff hesitancy of much ceramic embellishment. Gérard’s gestural rhythms develop their own momentum, extending out the freedom of each form so that every dish, jar or bowl has a special personality, a strong voice of its own. They are three-dimensional canvasses for his broad pourings and dips of glaze, his rapid painting and sgraffito incising. These objects, from his covetable mugs to his big square platters, have an activity and interaction that makes them impossible to ignore.
Gérard’s applications of slip create surfaces of variation and movement onto which Gerard can further mark and inscribe across the clay. He may add other details and flourishes, his cutting and modelling equally fast and loose. His big press-moulded dishes are similarly extemporised – the rims free and uneven – while some of his powerful jars have thick unglazed necks and bases, shapes with a real swagger. Monumental flared jars for the floor offer the broadest drawing areas. These qualities are concentrated into his smaller items too, from table bowls to jugs and beakers. There is no hierarchy. Every eminently usable pot is first and foremost a piece of functional art, complete when they are installed in house or garden, planted out or passed around the dining table. Pottery is a craft as well as an art, and loses much when potters abandon useful objects in favour of just plinth and shelf. Gérard’s vivid work is an act of celebration in which we can all participate.
David Whiting
March 2013
Jean-Nicolas Gérard
Jean-Nicolas Gérard was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954 and returned to France in 1961. He makes domestic slipware or terre vernissée...
Anne Mette Hjortshøj: Oval Teapots
Danish potter Anne Mette Hjortshøj talks about her oval teapots for Goldmark Gallery’s ‘Talking Pots’ series.
Click here or the image below to view all Anne Mette Hjortshøj work currently available >
Anne Mette Hjortshøj
Anne Mette Hjortshøj comes from a long line of potters from Denmark, often female, who make or have made strong, gutsy pots with little...
Jean-Nicolas Gérard – Ceramics Exhibition – Apr 2013
Please click below to view our film invitation and our online turning pages invitation.
We are delighted to announce an exhibition beginning Saturday 27th April 2013, featuring ceramics by leading French potter Jean-Nicolas Gérard.
Widely regarded as the potter’s potter, Gérard makes freely thrown and decorated domestic ware.
Jean-Nicolas was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954. He returned to France in 1961. He started studying ceramics in 1978 and was Jean Biagini’s student at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence. He also trained with Claire Bogino.
His work has now gained international acclaim. He is regularly invited internationally for workshops or residencies and has exhibited in USA, Australia, China and Japan.
His work will be with us at the gallery in a few weeks. Keep checking or sign up for our newsletter for more information.
Jean-Nicolas Gérard
Jean-Nicolas Gérard was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954 and returned to France in 1961. He makes domestic slipware or terre vernissée...
Anne Mette Hjortshøj ‘Paying Honest Attention’
She lives and works on the small Danish island of Bornholm situated in the Baltic Sea.
Our documentary gives a gentle and revealing insight into one of Denmark’s leading potters. It follows Hjortshøj’s daily life; collecting clay from the local beach for her glazes, throwing and making pots in her studio, and talking about the firing of her two chamber wood-fired salt kiln and its role in producing the decorative aspects of her work. We learn of her influences both within and outside of the Danish potting tradition and the inspiration she takes from the nature of the island.
Her pots are characterised by a quiet dignity, entirely in tune with her surroundings and demonstrate the greatest respect for both beauty and function.
Click here or the image below to view all Anne Mette Hjortshøj work currently available >
Anne Mette Hjortshøj
Anne Mette Hjortshøj comes from a long line of potters from Denmark, often female, who make or have made strong, gutsy pots with little...
Ken Matsuzaki – Selected Work
Ken Matsuzaki is one of Japan’s foremost potters. We have been representing him for the last 6 years and are delighted to offer you this small selection of his work.
(ipad/iphone, click here for catalogue)
Ken Matsuzaki
Ken Matsuzaki was born in 1950 in Tokyo. It was an artistic family – his father was a Nihonga painter and his brother went on to become a...
Svend Bayer – Monograph 2012
A 56 page monograph to accompany Bayer’s 2012 exhibition, featuring photographs of Bayer and his pots accompanied by an essay written by Tim Gent, is available. All photographs by Jay Goldmark.
(ipad/iphone, click here for catalogue)
Svend Bayer
Born in Uganda in 1946 and raised in Tanganyika into a ‘life style of undeserved privilege typical of the beginning of the end of the colonial...
Svend Bayer – Ceramics Exhibition
Svend Bayer is widely regarded as one of the world’s finest potters.
An exhibition featuring over 200 pots by Svend Bayer. Over the previous 2 years Bayer had been putting aside the very finest of his pots for this show. Exhibition Pots are now available for sale.
(ipad/iphone, click here for invite)
Each subtle pressure of palm, finger or thumb is transmitted immediately to the clay. Every angle of force, each leg brace, bow of the back, lift of the arm, results in a direct transmission of ideas, experience and skill from thought, through body, to pot. A poem is a product of mind. A pot is a product of everything that makes a potter. At their most elevated, each vessel embodies a direct representation of experience, contemplation, physical skill, co-ordination and character. As they leave the wheel these are supremely personal objects.
Tim Gent from the Svend Bayer monograph 2012
Svend Bayer
Born in Uganda in 1946 and raised in Tanganyika into a ‘life style of undeserved privilege typical of the beginning of the end of the colonial...
Lisa Hammond Monograph 2012
A 64 page monograph to accompany Lisa Hammond’s 2012 exhibition, featuring photographs of Lisa Hammond, her pots and studio environment accompanied by an essay written by Phil Rogers, is available. All photographs by Jay Goldmark.
(ipad/iphone, click here for catalogue)
Lisa Hammond
Lisa Hammond set up her first pottery in 1980. Aged only 23 she spent the next 5 years establishing Greenwich Pottery Workshop in London...
Lisa Hammond – Ceramics Exhibition
Each Lisa Hammond pot has a life of its own, its own sense of renewal. They all offer their own pleasures, an intimacy that adds another dimension to the way we eat and drink, to the ceremonies of the everyday, to the space we occupy. In short, to the way we live our lives. – David Whiting
(ipad/iphone, click here for invite)
We are delighted to announce our ceramics exhibition, featuring the work of top UK potter, Lisa Hammond. The exhibition opened in the gallery on Saturday 22nd September 2012 and had over 200 of the very best of Hammond’s pots, made over the previous 3 years.
Lisa Hammond
Lisa Hammond set up her first pottery in 1980. Aged only 23 she spent the next 5 years establishing Greenwich Pottery Workshop in London...
Making Large Pots by Svend Bayer
Svend Bayer is considered one of the UK’s greatest living potters. Watch this short video about how and why he makes his famous large storage jars.
Svend Bayer
Born in Uganda in 1946 and raised in Tanganyika into a ‘life style of undeserved privilege typical of the beginning of the end of the colonial...
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