Svend Bayer studio pottery

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Svend Bayer is Danish but spent much of his early life in Africa or at school in England.

After university he studied at the pottery of Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge in Cornwall and then travelled widely in Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia to visit country potteries that produced large storage jars. He returned to England in 1975 and set up his studio at Sheepwash in North Devon.

His pottery is fired in a large wood-fired kiln.

On a visit to another pottery that had a wood-fired kiln, I chatted with the potter who had just had a firing and he wanted to apologise because something I had ordered would not be finished until the next firing. He had three apprentices so, when the kiln was loaded for a firing, it held pots by all four potters and from several months of work so the success or not of a firing was about the livelihood for four families. If a firing went badly then it was a disaster for four families. That tension but also the demands of the process itself meant that the kiln was packed with care and with the skill that comes with experience and the whole process had to be supervised through the days and the nights as the kiln was brought up to temperature and then as the kiln cooled before it was unloaded.

But even in the very best studios accidents happen and the web site for Svend Bayer has an account and photographs by Brigitte Colleaux about a firing disaster at the kiln at Kingbeare in April 2019.

Part of the character of finished pots is that ash, impurities in the clay or different effects of the heat on single pot because that heat varies in intensity across the kiln are all essential to both the quality and the character of ceramics from a wood-fired kiln but when there is a problem that can escalate into a disaster

What is so incredible - as you use ceramic tableware like this - is that you can see and feel the way that the potter worked the malleable clay to, for example, pull out and down and smooth into place with a thumb a handle, and then how that action, that requires the coordination of hand and eye and experience, is then fixed and can be seen by all after the pot is fired and for as long as that piece is still used and appreciated.

This work by Svend Bayer is studio pottery of the very highest quality and is the work of a master craftsman and yet it is also functional pottery that is made to be used and, in being used, the bowls and cups and jars enhance day-to-day life in a way that is difficult to measure or quantify.

The Japanese or Korean style jar with four small handles, shown here, sits on the side in my kitchen because it is the perfect size and height to hold all the spatulas and ladles and cooking spoons I need so that means it is used every day.

The small jar with a lid sits alongside the hob and holds cooking salt.

I swear that the bowls, shown here, when they are full of soup, really do make that soup taste better because the bowls make a simple meal of soup and fresh bread feel special.

And, surely, isn’t that what good craftsmanship and good design is really about?

Buying good ceramic tablewares is one simple way towards sustainability because it should be the antidote to our cavalier attitudes to consumerism … the swipe/like/buy/get bore/discard/buy something new world of this century.

These bowls and the casserole were not particularly cheap but nor were they horrendously expensive but, more than forty years after buying them, I still enjoy using them and, every time I use them, they really do make life feel better.

Svend Bayer

 

Claydies at Ann Linnemann Galleri

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Claydiesselfies - an exhibition of the work of Karen Kjælgård-Larsen and Tina Broksø at Officinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere - was unfortunately disrupted by the closure of galleries during the lockdown of the city with the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

This exhibition, at the gallery of Ann Linnemann in Kronprinsessegade, is a welcome chance to see some of the works shown in that larger exhibition in the Spring.

Again it is possible to take selfies 'wearing' some of the full-sized ceramics of vests and T-shirts. If that is difficult to imagine then just think about those old seaside and fairground attractions with large painted cartoons of large ladies and skinny men in Edwardian swimming costumes without faces but with large holes where people stick through their faces from the back to be photographed.

The t-shirts with a Claydies logo on the chest or a string vest or a pleated skirt are obviously an ironic parody that comments on our obsession with both fashion and with taking pictures of ourselves or having our faces in every shot to prove we were there and show what a fantastic time we were having. But these huge pots are also a phenomenal affirmation of the ceramic skills of the two potters.

As I said in my review of the initial exhibition, the best cartoonists are usually highly-skilled artists who understand completely the techniques and skills in drawing that form the basis for their work. You have to master an art before you can subvert it. Here, at the Claydiesselfies exhibition, the works show an amazing and quirky sense of humour but also look at the use of colour, the use of different glazes, with references to various ceramic styles, but they are also very large pots that must have been difficult to fire. Virtuoso pieces.

This exhibition has smaller works that were not in the Officinet exhibition including the infamous and really rather macabre ceramic eye balls and surreal and unsettling clay noses and lips and ears on lumpy stalks that are set to face a mirror so that when you look into the mirror the lips and ears replace or overlay your own. I guess you have to be there and have done that to appreciate the joke ….. a bit like selfies really.

review of Claydiesselfies at Officinet

the exhibition is at
Ann Linneman Galleri, Kronprinsessegade 51, København
from 8 October 2020 until 14 November 2020

Claydies

 

Ildpot by Grethe Meyer from FDB Møbler

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FDB Møbler have just relaunched the Ildpot range of ceramics that were first produced and sold by the company in 1976.

The designer Grethe Meyer (1918-2008) had trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 1947 - the only woman to graduate that year. She became a leading furniture and industrial designer who, from 1960, ran her own design studio.

The Ildpot or Firepot range is not made using ordinary clay but this is "cordierite ceramic, a magnesium aluminium".

That is in quotation marks because I am not a potter so I just had to copy the description from the FDB web site but I know enough to know that the "silicate" part indicates a clay body that is fired at a high temperature and is like a stoneware or even a heavyweight porcelain. The surface, although matt, is vitrified so, like glass, it will not absorb food, does not need a glaze and second firing and is tough enough for bowls and dishes and pans to be taken straight from the freezer and put in the oven and can then be taken straight from the hot oven to the table for the food to be served.

In the 1930s, Danish furniture designers were still producing large and expensive cabinets for storing a full dinner service and, in many houses, both the cabinet and its fine china would have been in the dining room. China, glassware and cutlery would have been taken from the cabinet to set the table and then returned to the cabinet after the meal and after it had been washed in the scullery or in the kitchen. In the kitchen, in any respectable house, food would have been transferred from pans and roasting tins to serving dishes for the table.

From the 1950s onwards, more and more women with families were working and, for this new age and for a very different lifestyle, the Ildpot range was designed for food that could either be prepared ahead and chilled or frozen or meals could be produced quickly after a day at work and then, after cooking, could be taken straight to the table. It was the age of casseroles and pan roasted meat and vegetables.

The Ildpot bowls and dishes have bold rims and straight sides so are simple shapes that are easy to pick up when they hot and easier to wash and the collection was designed to stack, to take up as little space as possible, and, almost certainly, that suggests it would have been kept in a cupboard in the kitchen rather than in the dining room.

Of course, this was also the period when new kitchens, even in small apartments, were designed to take a small table with compact chairs so it was a period when even middle-class families would eat in the kitchen and only used their dining room, if there was one, for weekends or for more important family meals.

It is fascinating that this oven-to-table ware is evidence for some major change in eating habits - the move from formal and traditional dishes to meals for busy families that were easy to prepare and easy to serve.

Over the forty years or more since the Ildpot range was designed, meals - the food eaten and the dishes cooked - have changed - partly with fashion; partly with more people travelling and returning home with some adventurous new ideas to try at home; partly with new ingredients with some foods available through a longer season or even year-round and with more and more people buying ready-prepared meals that are simply reheated in the oven or the microwave.

But maybe FDB have realised that there may be more changes on the way. If lockdown returns this winter; we may well have more time at home and it’s possible we will turn back to more substantial and more traditional food for comfort.

When the Ildpot ceramics came out, Søren Gericke, then a young chef, created some suitable recipes and, with this relaunch, he has produced 16 new dishes that are published on the FDB site.

His recipe for rabbit made me think about how much what we eat has changed.

When I was very small, my grandparents still had chickens in their garden, in a hen house that my grandfather built at the beginning of the war so that they had their own eggs once rationing started. One of my very earliest memories, as a toddler, was going down their garden path to reach into the nesting box to collect eggs for my breakfast.

But then, thinking back, I remember that even well after the war ended, the chickens were too valuable to eat … so we had roast beef or roast lamb or roast pork at the weekend, huge joints of meat you would think twice about buying now because they are expensive, but we had chicken for important meals at Christmas or Easter and then it was treat. How things have changed.

Also, when I was small, we had rabbit most weeks, as a mid-week supper, because it was so cheap. I had forgotten that but now can't actually remember the last time I had rabbit stew.

FDB Møbler

 
 

Store Krukker / Large Pots at Designmuseum Danmark

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Designmuseum Danmark has just opened a new display in one of the large side galleries with 70 ceramic vessels from their own collection and described simply as large pots.

They vary in period and in country of origin but most are by Danish potters and artists and most are from the late 19th century onwards although there are also older ceramic vessels from Japan, Korea and China and work from Spain, France and England … all countries with strong but distinct ceramic traditions.

Some of the pieces are clearly storage jars - so utilitarian - but there are also sophisticated decorative vessels and some fine studio pottery.

The size of some of these pots is amazing and the selection of ceramics shown here provides an amazing opportunity to see how the technical skill of the potter; the form or shape of the pot; the choice of smooth, perfect and highly finished surfaces or the decision to leave a more natural finish determined by the character of the clay and the use or not of decoration, incised or in relief; the types of glaze; any use of texture or a preference for a smooth finish or high shine or matt surface and of course the final colour or colours produce works of incredibly diverse styles.

Designmuseum Danmark

 
 

NATUR KULTUR OBJEKT - works by Turi Heisselberg Pedersen and Marianne Krumbach

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Ann Linnemann Gallery

Natur Kultur Objekt at the Ann Linnemann Gallery in Kronprinsessegade shows the work of two ceramicists - Turi Heisselberg Pedersen and Marianne Krumbach - with ten pieces from each artist. 

These works could hardly be more different in style but it is interesting to see, juxtaposed here, their use of colour and texture and to see how these very sculptural pieces occupy their space.

Ann Linnemann Galleri
Kronprinsessegade 51, København
12 September - 19 October 2019

Turi Heisseiberg Pedersen

Turi Heisselberg Pedersen studied at the School of Design in Kolding. She has taught and has been an external examiner at the Royal Academy.

Works shown here are a development of a series entitled Faceted Shapes from 2015 to 2016 where the pieces had strong underlying bulbous or baluster shapes but with bold irregular facets - flat planes - over the whole form to create strongly geometric pieces. In this more recent series, there is that same use of facets like an irregular giant crystal but with more complicated composite forms that are more distinctly asymmetric and, in some pieces, there are two or three elements grouped together. 

This is stoneware with a slip finish and the surfaces are matt - rather than glazed and reflecting light - so the material itself increases and enhances shadows and makes distinct changes in tones across each face as light falls on the piece. The surfaces are boldly cut at different angles but the finish has a light texture and that too effects the colour and enhances and both simplifies but also makes more dramatic the quality of the shadows. 

This fragmentation of complex forms is reminiscent of the work of so-called Deconstructionist architecture of the late 20th century. 

There appears to be a distinct evolution from smooth, rounded and symmetrical shapes in an earlier series of ceramic vessels - The Baluster Series from 2008 to 2012 - and then a series of related but less complex forms but with fluting or deep texture called Organic Shapes from 2013. The current works are moving to a stronger emphasis on the underlying geometry of form and surface together.

Turi Heisselberg Pedersen

 

Marianne Krumbach

Marianne Krumbach studied Art History at the University of Copenhagen - graduating in 1994 - and then, through to 2001, studied ceramics and glass at the School of Design in Kolding.

The pieces shown here are, in comparison with the work of Turi Heisselberg Pedersen, organic but in two forms …. with one group taking as a starting point nature, be it rather dark and foreboding nature, in groups of stems or leaves or bud-like shapes that enclose and seem to be self contained or even exclude the viewer, and the other amazing and complex and loosely-wound shapes of strips or ribbons of clay that somehow draw you in like entering a maze or secret place. 

They have strong colours with thick glazes and again much of this, in terms of materials and colour, is about exploring light as it falls across complicated forms to create deep and dramatic shadow not only beyond the work - the shadow cast -  but shadows and dark spaces within.

Marianne Krumbach

 

Kähler at CHART Design Fair August 2019

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The Kåhler pottery was founded by Joachim Christian Hermann Kähler in 1839 and this exhibition at Den Frie - for the CHART Design Fair - is in part to mark their 180th anniversary. 

Initially, Kähler produced stoves and cooking pots and kitchenwares. Two sons - Hermann A Kähler and his younger brother Carl Frederik Kähler - took over the factory in 1872. After a fire in 1875, a new factory was established and the company began producing finer ceramics, particularly vases, and began working with ceramic artists including H Brendekilde, L A Ring and Carl Lund and later Karl Hansen Reistrup and then Svend Hammershøi who became the artistic director of the company. 

Kähler experimented with shapes, glazes - particularly a hallmark deep red lustre - and with decorative techniques of painting by hand.

The exhibition here showed a range of their pieces through the history of the factory that show how, as a commercial company, they had to respond to changes of fashion but also, by employing well-established and talented artists, they could also set certain styles. 

Plaster casts for slip-pouring moulded, rather than thrown, pieces and sample strips of glaze colours gave some insight into the technical aspects of the high-quality ceramics.

In 1974 the factory was sold to Næstved municipality and then passed through a number of owners including Holmegaard but since 2018 has been part of the Rosendahl Group.

Kåhler

Axel Salto Stentøjsmesteren / Axel Salto stoneware master

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A major exhibition of the work of Axel Salto at Øregaard Museum in Hellerup - just up the coast to the north of the city.

Axel Salto (1889 - 1961) studied painting at the Royal Academy and graduated in 1914.

In 1916 he lived in Paris where he met Picasso and Henri Matisse and on returning to Denmark he produced, edited and wrote for a short-lived but influential journal Klingen / The Blade that was published between 1917 and 1919.

He was a member of the Grønningen group of artists and one of The Four with Svend Johansen, Vilhelm Lundstrom and Karl Larsen who exhibited together between 1920 and 1929.

In the 1920s he began to design ceramics and his stoneware pieces were produced in the workshops of Carl Haller - Saxbo keramik in Frederiksberg and he also produced designs for porcelain by Bing & Grondahl with his work shown at the Paris exhibition in 1925.

The exhibition shows a full range of his ceramic works from small stoneware bowls with incised decoration or bold moulding with Japanese style glazes to large scale works with scenes from Classical mythology or stylised nature.

Paintings and strong and very confident ink and linework drawings including designs for the ceramics show clearly the style Salto developed with his training as a painter.

He also worked with the book binder August Sandgren and a selection of designs for end papers are shown in an upper gallery which have a distinct feel of the 1930s with deep colours and stylised and small repeat patterns.

 

the exhibition continues at Øregaard Museum until 23 June 2019

 

Lotte Westphael at the Frue Plads craft market

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The ceramicist Lotte Westphael trained at Kolding and now has her studio in Silkeborg.

Her distinctive and elegant pieces illustrate several major points about design and the design process that have been discussed on this site but are well worth repeating.

These are slabs pots but not the normal style of slab pots that immediately spring to mind. Raising the sides of a vessel by pinching the clay and pulling it upwards or by forming the sides with thin rolls of clay then smoothed together or forming a flat single sheet of clay and then raising it around a flat and usually circular base … making a slab pot … as techniques predate moulding or throwing pieces on a potters wheel. It would be wrong to see such pots as crude or basic and in skilled hands those techniques can be used to make thin and well-shaped and well-finished pots but here the clay is a fine porcelain body in a mixture or recipe that Lotte has developed for this phase of her work and the finished work is an incredibly refined and elegant slab pot.  And phase is the right word because on the stall at the craft market it was possible to see several pieces that reflected stages in more than three years of development.

What makes the finished ceramics so elegant and so astonishing is that the partly-dried sheets of clay for the sides are slashed and the strips of darker clay inserted and the sides rolled thinner again so that the design is actually not applied as it might appear to be but is an integral part of the material of the piece. The tall sides are then built up by butting together thinner strips and, as any potter will tell you, the most difficult part and the most vulnerable part likely to be revealed in the firing is any joins. Here the join also has to be precise as the style of the finished work has an exacting graphic quality. The strips added to each other reminded me of ikat and textiles where strips or woven ribbons are sewn together to form a larger piece. When I suggest that, Lotte Westphael smiled and said that actually she has studied in Japan and suddenly it was obvious that the finished works do have that fascinating design aesthetic that can be seen independently and with clear but subtle differences in Denmark and in Japan. The colour palette of the finished works could be typically Danish or, on the other hand, typically Japanese.

What these ceramic works show so clearly is a complicated relationship between the interests and the evolving style of the artist; a design concept that evolves and develops over a sequence of works and designs for pieces that rely on the confidence to push both the material and the techniques used in new directions or to new boundaries or limits. To use phrases like confidence or courage when talking about design might seem odd to someone who does not design or does not make but actually that sense of focus combined with the determination to realise an idea is at the core of much new design work. Courage? Well yes. For most potters the works they sell are their only income. So safer to stick with making what people have bought before. Confidence? Well yes because, for instance here, the clay in the early stages of the production is not self supporting so the sides are set out around a former but as the clay dries it shrinks so remove it too soon and the piece collapses or try to remove the former too late and it won’t come out. Hours of work can be lost.

A kiln will take days and days of work in a single firing. Get that firing wrong and that time and that potential income is lost. Few potters would talk about those aspects of their work to a customer … particularly in the environment of the craft market … but this clearly is a good example of one of those points where design skills, technical skills, the understanding of what the materials can or cannot do and the imagination to try and realise new ideas all come together.

 

Lotte Westphael, Anedalvej 1b, Silkeborg