Kirsten Stingle: ceramics and found objects

Kirsten Stingle’s use of a bundt pan drew me in, the pan now a skirt for her ceramic torsos. Maybe the whimsy made me look, but it is Stingle’s ability to tell a story through the sculptural details that held my interest. She mixes ceramics and found objects to create narrative figures, drawing on her background in theater to help the stories unfold.



In Renewal, pictured above, a young woman is holding an empty bird’s nest above her found-object skirt. Is the look on her face sadness, contemplation, or could it be something else? Look closely and you will see two baby birds resting on the back of her skirt. A nice reminder that Spring, a time of renewal and rebirth, has arrived. Perhaps her expression is one of quiet joy.





Her background in the dramatic arts led her to want to express common threads of the human experience. Stingle was working in the field of welfare policy in New York City when the events of 9/11 happened, which led to a shift back to her creative roots. Says Kirsten, “More than ever I wanted to break down barriers and expose the common threads of humanity through storytelling. This time, however, I turned to ceramic sculpture as a vehicle for my narrative impulses.

~From an article in Multi-Tasking Woman

Ronit Baranga - Tea party - Clay sculpture

ronitbaranga.com

Functional Pottery Animals

These pottery dragons were created by Christy Crews Dunn.
Christy creates pottery of almost any kind of animal you can imagine. All animals not only are beautiful, but also practical. If you haven't noticed, one of them is a lamp, and the other is a teapot! They are all individual and unique.

The clothing from ceramic shards

Li Xiaofeng is Beijing artist who creates clothing piece made from traditional chinese ceramics.
He makes the clothing from ceramic shards coming from the song, ming,yuan and qing dynasties, which are sewn together on a leather undergarment. Some of his projects include a suit jacket and tie as well as a number of mid-length women’s dresses. In Xiaofeng’s studio, piles of ceramic pieces sit in bins sorted by date, colour and shape. ‘save as: contemporary chinese art born of ancient traditions’ currently running at the Virginia Miller Gallery is his exhibition debut outside of Asia.

virginiamiller.com

Hayashi Shigeki Ceramic Art

The ceramic and porcelain work by Japanese artist Hayashi Shigeki is really impressive. He took tradition Japan ceramic art works to another level. He hand made, oven bake each piece.

Hayashi Shigeki, from Tajimi City, draws inspiration for his ceramic figures from images from science fiction, animated film and Japanese comic books known as manga?all of which have attracted him since he was a child. He comes from a region of Japan famous for the production of porcelain domestic ware, and he says "In order to express my ideas as art, I have found that porcelain is the best medium. However, I do not think of my works as ceramic pieces."

Winstanley Pottery Cats

Winstanley Cats have been made by Jenny Winstanley for over 40 years. All the animals produced are unique in that there are no two painted exactly the same, therefore each animal is highly collectable. They are made in a range of sizes from the smallest size kittens through to life-size size. Their eyes are made of cathedral glass.Their bodies of the finest hard-fired earthenware.Their colours and patterns painted by a select team of artists.They are also listed in the "MillersGuide" to antiques.

Source:winstanleycats.uk.com

The Polymer Clay Dolls of Isabelle D’hauterive

Can’t find much about this artist on the internet, but when I stumbled on Isabelle D’Hauterive’s endearing polymer clay dolls I was instantly captivated. Charming. Folksy. Quietly Colorful.

Unusual Paperclay Sculptures of Graham Hay

Graham Hay - His art practise is based upon two simple things. Paper and clay. He is create and fire paperclay sculptures, and carve compressed paper sculptures. The interest in his work has resulted in a growing number of interstate and international exhibitions, as well as fuelling his appetite to learn more about how the arts and crafts, and society are organised.

His ceramic paperclay work is an attempt to illustrate this on-going interest in the organisation of the arts and crafts, and society. He has been inspired by architecture and local plants. Compressed paper sculptures are a by-product of office work, research, everyday correspondence and junk mail.

Ceramic Stories by Fleur Schell

Although Fleur Schell lives and works in Western Australia, her work is relevant no matter which corner of the globe you call home. Schell’s ceramic art is often narrative, as we see in The Excellent Adventures of Heidi and Kilbey, a series of figures and scenes that lovingly document a mother’s vision of her little girl’s every day life. Created for a children’s book she is writing, the porcelain figures will grace each page of this ceramic story book.





The characters are quaint and lovely from afar, but when you look closely at the details, you begin to understand the true charm of this work - look at the detail of ‘Medicine Chest’.
















... and line of funny fish.

The lost secrets of Classical Athenian vases

Rise and fall of a technique

Ancient ceramic art and technology reached its apogee in Athenian workshops during the 6th-5th centuries BC. During this period the artistic and technological quality of the fired black and red figure vases reached perfection. It was only natural that such perfection had to be witnessed and established by the application of the creator's signature of which we have over 100 examples. We also witness the emergence of schools and workshops which applied signatures as trade marks and guarantees of quality.

The incised mark ΝΙΚΟΣΘΕΝΗΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕΝ is the classical precursor of the marks and signatures of the great European workshops of the last few centuries. The products of Athenian workshops were in great demand throughout the Mediterranean markets from Etruria and South Italy, to Carthage, Egypt and the coasts of Anatolia (Asia Minor). The Attic black and red figure vases served as aesthetic and technological reference points for the objects of domestic and decora­tive usage in very much the same way as the products of the great names of European pot­tery and glass making (i.e. Wedgwood, Sevres, Limoges, Meissen, Galle, Lalique).


The decay of the social and economic fabric of Athens which followed the Peloponnesian war marks the beginning of a long period of gradual deterioration of both aesthetic and technological standards, the appearance of lower quality imitations and finally during the Roman period the complete abandonment of the technique. This was the end of the iron reduction technique, the most widespread process for decorating ceramics which lasted more than 2500 years. Present day copies which are sold in tourist markets are painted over and bear no relation to the techniques of the Classical period.

The rediscovery

The aesthetic interest in Classical antiquity which followed the Renaissance led to an active search for the lost technique of the so-called ATTIC BLACK GLAZE. In 1752 le Comte de Caylus published a treatise in France where he describes the glaze as "basically ferruginous earth". Fifteen years later Josiah Wedgwood, after failing to reproduce the glaze he produced the famous "black basalt" substitutes, decorated in the red-figured style to celebrate the opening of his factory at Etruria (Staffordshire).

During the next two centuries chemists, archaeologists and ceramists met with the same difficulties to reproduce the Attic BG devoting articles and treatises to the subject. Schumann (1942), Winter (1959) and Hoffman (1962) in Germany as well as Noble (1966) in the USA attempted to overcome similar difficulties by introducing "exotic" additives such as urine, dregs of wine, blood, bone powder, and wood or seaweed ashes. The definitive answer to the mystery was provided in 1993 by Aloupi in Greece in the course of her PhD research on the "Nature and Micromorphology of paint layers in ancient ceramics". The key to the technique lies in the use of carefully chosen and laboriously processed natural clays in water, followed by a rather complex firing cycle during which the clay based paints acquire their final black or red colour depending on the kiln temperature and atmosphere. The result is a ceramic object whose colour, texture, chemical composition and microstructure are indistinguishable from the original. This process forms the basis of the THETIS 'fired black' Ceramic Collection.
Source

Famous Swedish designer - LISA LARSON

LISA LARSON is a famous Swedish designer who creates collectible artware in her home of Gustavsberg, Sweden. Each piece is a perfect example of her talent for characterization. She creates not only figures of various national origins but wonderful animals with their individual personalities. Her elegant objects d'art already appeal to several generations and are collectors items. She is also a designer for the well-known German porcelain companies of Rosenthal and Goebel Porzellan. Her works are represented in museums in both Scandinavia and abroad.

Source

Beate Kuhn - Pioneer German studio potter

Beate Kuhn is one of the most important German potters of our age.

The works of Beate Kuhn are known in the whole world. Her awards and honors are numerous. Beate Kuhn’s artistic work is characterized by her pottery: the potter’s wheel is her base tool. The sheer number of one-off pieces by the artist – more than 1,500, all bear her unmistakable and fascinating personal touch.

Already during her studies at the Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt, she designed elegant avant-garde vases and a jar for the Rosenthal porcelain factory’s studio-line . These are 1950s’ classics. Her first autonomous works are sculpted vessels, which reveal her fascination with the oeuvre of Joan Miró and Paul Klee.

Throwing pots on the wheel was to determine her whole oeuvre. Already in the 1950’s visitors to the International Expo in Frankfurt were delighted by her intensively colored and painted works. This is surprising, as painted vessels were not trendy at the time.


In 1957 Beate Kuhn moved to Düdelsheim and set up her own workshop. The important German potters Karl and Ursula Scheid also live in her neighborhood. This time coincided with a change in her oeuvre. Since the early 1960’s Beate Kuhn has created freely designed sculptures, each piece consisting of individual thrown and cut elements, assembled into a whole. In each of her works, the artist confines herself where possible to a single basic element executed in different sizes, which are then all juxtaposed in serial fashion. By taking this step, Beate Kuhn became one of the first potters in Germany to abandon utilitarian work in favor of purely artistic work.

The Stiftung KERAMION is exhibiting a survey of Kuhn's oeuvre from the early 1950’s until today. The artist's animal sculptures, especially many depictions of cats, for which Beate Kuhn creates detailed sketches, show she is a very close observer of nature.
Source

Pottery Techniques

There are three basic categories of forming techniques used in making pottery - handwork, wheelwork, and slipcasting. It's very common for wheelworked pieces to be finished by handwork techniques. Slipcast pieces tend not to be, as that negates one of the prime advantages of casting.

Handwork methods are the most primitive and individual techniques, where pieces are constructed from hand-rolled coils, slabs, ropes and balls of clay, often joined with a liquid clay slurry. No two pieces of handwork will be exactly the same, so it is not suitable for making precisely matched sets of items e.g. dinnerware. Doing handwork enables the potter to use their imagination to create one-of-a-kind works of art.

The potter's wheel can be used for mass production, although often it is employed to make individual pieces. A ball of clay is placed in the center of a turntable, called the wheel head, which is turned chiefly using foot power (a kick wheel or treadle wheel) or a variable speed electric motor. Oftentimes a disk of plastic, wood, or plaster is affixed to the wheel head and the ball of clay attached to the disk rather than the wheel head so as to facilitate easy removal of the finished piece. This disk is referred to as a bat. The wheel revolves rapidly while the clay is pressed, squeezed and pulled gently into shape. The process of pressuring the clay into a radial symmetry, so that it does not move from side to side as the wheel head rotates is referred to as "centering" the clay - usually the most difficult skill to master for beginning potters.

Wheel work takes a lot of technical ability, but a skilled potter can produce many virtually identical plates, vases or bowls in a day. Because of its nature, wheel work can only be used to initially create items with radial symmetry on a vertical axis. These pieces can then be altered by impressing, bulging, carving, fluting, faceting, slicing, and other methods to make them more visually interesting. Often, thrown pieces are further modified by having handles, lids, feet, spouts, and other functional aspects added using the techniques of handworking. There are two related techniques that improve repeatability of wheelwork. A jigger is a mould that is slowly brought down onto the outside of an object, whilst it is being turned on a wheel. A solid mould is used to form the inside of the piece. Similarly, a jogger is used to shape the inside of a piece, pressing the outside against a solid mold.

Although these techniques have been in use since the 18th Century, they are usually considered minor "industrial" methods by modern studio potters. There is contention among potters over whether a "jigged" piece can be considered hand produced.

Slipcasting is probably the easiest technique for mass-production, especially for shapes not easily made on a wheel. A liquid clay slip is poured into plaster moulds and allowed to harden slightly. This slip can be formulated to mature at a variety of temperatures. Once the plaster has absorbed most of the liquid from the outside layer of clay the remaining slip is poured back into the storage tub, and the item is left to dry. Finally the finished item is removed from the mould, "fettled" (trimmed neatly), and allowed to air-dry.
This method is commonly used for smaller decorative pieces, such as figurines, which have many intricate details. In the United States, moulds and their slipcast pieces are primarily an industrial product, and are usually called "ceramics" to distinguish them from other pottery.

Whimsical Bliss Stuidios - Bakers of Fine Ceramic Confections

Fun, fanciful and whimsical ceramic confections for table and home.


A beautiful accent to our Purse Box is our Purse Frame. Save a memory in style. Hand made flowers with Swarovski rhinestne centers accent each pattern.


The perfect teapot for any woman who loves shoes - which is just about all of us! A fabulous high heel embellished with hand made floowers & leaves crowns the teapot. The flowers are accented with Swarovski rhinestones.


This shoe cake plate sits atop two fabulous shoes. The shoes are embellished with hand made flowers and Swarovski rhinesrone centers. The cake plate is large and features lots of dots and lace work.




Top hat, white gloves and red flower in the lapel complete with Sawarovski rhinestone center make this teapot perfect for your next formal tea!


Source - whimsicalblissstudios.com

6 Basic Types of Greek Pottery

Krater - Mixing Water with Wine - Wide mouth

Hydra - Carrying water - narrow mouth with lid

Kylix - Drinking cup - 2 handled flat

Oinochoe - Wine Jug - tall jug, narrow mouth usually with pouring spout

Amphora - Storage for supplies - Large, tall urn
tall, two-handled storage vessel for wine, corn, oil, or honey;

Khyton - Wine drinking usually a character

Pottery - major art in classical Greece

The fashioning and painting of ceramics was a major art in classical Greece. Native clay was shaped easily on the wheel, and each distinct form had a name and a specific function in Greek society and ceremonial: The amphora was a tall, two-handled storage vessel for wine, corn, oil, or honey; the hydria, a three-handled water jug; the lecythus, an oil flask with a long, narrow neck, for funeral offerings; the kylix, a double-handled drinking cup on a foot; the oenochoe, a wine jug with a pinched lip; the krater, a large bowl for mixing wine and water. Undecorated black pottery was used throughout Greek and Hellenistic times, the forms being related either to those of decorated pottery or those of metalwork. Both styles influenced Roman ceramics.

Even in the Bronze Age, the Greeks took advantage of oxidizing and reducing kilns to produce a shiny black slip on a cream, brownish, or orange-buff body, the shade depending on the type of clay. At first, decorative designs were abstract. By the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BC), however, stylized forms from nature appeared. By the Late Bronze Age, plants, sea creatures, and fanciful animals were painted on pots of well-conceived shape by the Mycenaeans, who were initially influenced by Cretan potters. Athenian geometric style replaced the Mycenaean about 1000 BC and declined by the 6th century BC. Large kraters in the Geometric style, with bands of ornament, warriors, and processional figures laid out in horizontal registers, were found at the Dipylon cemetery of Athens; they date from about 750 BC.

Attic potters introduced black-figure ware in the early 6th century. Painted black forms adorned the polished red clay ground, with detail rendered by incising through the black. White and reddish-purple were added for skin and garments. Depictions of processions and chariots continued; animals and hybrid beasts (particularly in the Orientalizing phase that followed the Geometric period) were also shown, at times surrounded by geometric or vegetal motifs. Such decoration was always well integrated with the vessel shapes, and the iconography of Greek mythology can be identified. Beginning in the 6th century, the decoration stressed humans far more than animals. Favorite themes included people and gods at work, battle, and banquet; musicians; weddings and other ceremonies; and women at play or dressing. In some cases, events or heroes were labeled. Mythological and literary scenes became more frequent. Potters' and painters' names and styles have been identified, even when they did not sign their works.

Red-figure pottery was invented about 530 BC, becoming especially popular between 510 and 430. The background was painted black, and the figures were left in reserve on the red-brown clay surface; details on the figures were painted in black, which allowed the artist greater freedom in drawing. The paint could also be diluted for modulating the color. Secondary colors of red and white were less used; gold was sometimes added for details of metal and jewelry. Anatomy was rendered more realistically, and after 480, so were nuances of gesture and expression. Although Athens and Corinth were centers for red-figure pottery, the style also spread to the Greek islands. By the 4th century BC, however, it declined in quality. Another Greek style featured outline drawing on a white ground, with added colors imitating monumental painting; these vessels, however, were impractical for domestic use.
Source

Frankoma Pottery

It wasn't so long ago that many pieces of Frankoma pottery languished on antique shop shelves collecting dust. Although Frankoma did have a few admirers, the company's older items produced during the 1930s were the main focus for pottery lovers for many years. Now the more common Frankoma pieces are getting more attention, and prices are starting to rise accordingly. Finally, it's fashionable to take another look at Frankoma pottery.

Frankoma's Origin

The founder of the company, John Frank, came to Oklahoma in 1927 as an art and pottery teacher at the University of Oklahoma. Working on various geological digs, he discovered the rich clays of the region and set up a studio using a butter churn to mix the clay and a fruit jar to grind the glazes. It wasn't long till he left his teaching position to further his love for creating pottery, according to the company's Web site.

Frankoma pieces made since 1954 sport a red clay from Sapulpa, Okla.

in comparison to the older pieces formed with a tan colored clay dug at Ada, Okla. Using these source names of Sapulpa and Ada, along with glaze colors and item styles, collectors are able to identify and date Frankoma Pottery.

Frankoma's Inspiration and Colors


The Great Southwest served as inspiration for many Frankoma works. The factory formed pitchers shaped like wagon wheels, attractive boot-shaped vases and interesting Native American masks over the years. Even their dinnerware patterns have a western flair.



Two of their most recognizable glazes are named Prairie Green and Desert Gold. In fact, many people associate Frankoma entirely with their medium green glaze that seemed rather dated and unattractive until recently. Since both these colors were used extensively over the years, it's the type of clay used in the piece rather than the color of the glaze, which determines value in this instance.

Many of their works, such as their dated political mugs shaped like elephants and donkeys, feature a wide variety of colors. Other series pieces, including bicentennial plates, were also very colorful. And most of these pieces are still relatively affordable, even for the beginning collector.

Pricing Frankoma


The colorful political mugs range in price from about $10-60 and bicentennial plates generally sell in the $15 range with a couple of exceptions for rarities. A 1974 Nixon/Ford elephant mug can sell for several hundred dollars because so few were produced. And a 1972 plate, with the word "states" spelled as "statis" because of a mold flaw, usually sells for more than $100. Many of the Wagon Wheel dinnerware pieces still sell for less than $20 apiece, with only the serving pieces pressing into the $30-75 range.

With the older Frankoma pieces being hard to find and priced quite high, listing in the $1,000-$5,000 range per piece when sold by a knowledgeable dealer, the more recent Frankoma works have garnered some interest during the past couple of years. The dusty treasures once ignored by pottery shoppers have taken on a new light as collectors make a place for them in their homes.
Source