I Had Too Much Coffee
The economics of coffee and its colonial origins.
Go to link below for full video and better quality.
Sunday, November 6, 2022
Saturday, September 3, 2022
Delftware
Many of the British ceramics in Chipstone’s depict images of kings, queens, and other influential figures. One lovely exception is this 1720 delftware mug that depicts the Thames waterman John Giles. Records of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen indicate that Giles fulfilled his apprenticeship in 1697 and by 1707 was living in Queenhithe ward, where he sits in his “wherry” or canal boat in this pastoral scene.
Giles is portrayed leaning forward with his visible oar poised above the water. The shadows over the dappled water suggest it is a sunny summer day, as does the dense foliage of the trees, represented by the potter’s skillfully rendered green and blue sponge painting. The oarsman sits near the bank as another waterman rows past in the background. Perhaps to enhance the theme of water, the potter of this mug added a wavelike ornamental band around the bottom. While the trees in this scene look plausible for Giles’ locale, the oversized foliage and rocks are imaginative decorative motifs that the potter borrowed from imported Chinese ceramics.
Heightening the decorative merging of East and West on this mug is the careful depiction of Queenhithe in the background. Even in 1720, Queenhithe or “Queen’s Harbor” was an ancient site characterized by centuries of commercial activity. Established in 899, the dock soon became the main port for domestic trade between London and the countryside, and by the 16th century the surrounding area was a thriving working-class neighborhood. As an access point to the river, Queenhithe also became a center for watermen like Giles, who transported people rather than goods along the river. The “Waterman’s Stairs” can be seen in the background of this image, and they lead our eyes up to the ward’s church towers, which signaled home to Giles and his colleagues as they plied the river.
In certain respects, this carefully composed scene of activity on the Thames contrasts the harsh reality of life of watermen, who have been distinguished throughout British history for their toughness, expert knowledge of the river’s tides and currents, and colorful language. Like essential workers today, their job also brought great risks. The diarist Samuel Pepys described how in a 1665 plague outbreak, watermen were afraid to take passengers, and his waterman “buried a child and is dying himself.” Perhaps, then, John Giles especially enjoyed this happier representation of his life’s work, his river, boat, and home setting in Queenhithe.
Above images and text from Chipstone Foundation Facebook page.
The mission of The Chipstone Foundation is to promote and enhance appreciation and knowledge of American material culture (emphasizing the decorative arts) by scholars, students and the general public.
Below are excerpts from an article by Cath Pound, June 24, 2020 for the BBC.
Link here to read full article and see more images: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200623-delftware-porcelain-the-global-story-of-a-dutch-icon
Chinese potters in Jingdezhen, a kiln city in the inland province of Jiangxi, first developed the technology to fire true porcelain in the 14th Century. Its production requires kiln temperatures of 1,300C, high enough to turn the glazing mixture to glassy transparency and fuse it with the clay body, after which designs are trapped between the two layers. The blue and white aesthetic the Dutch would later make their own was itself created to appeal to the Persian market who decorated their own ceramics with cobalt blue designs but could not match the whiteness of Chinese porcelain.
Dutch traders were forbidden to travel inland to Jingdezhen so that the ceramicists could protect their secret. Instead they were required to order from intermediaries, and then Chinese ships would deliver them to Batavia (now Jakarta), the trading outpost the Dutch established in 1619, which would eventually become the capital of the Dutch East Indies.
The popularity of Chinese porcelain meant that almost immediately ceramicists throughout Europe started to imitate it. The most successful of these imitators were, of course, those from Delft. But this was far from a uniquely Dutch triumph. “The tin-glazed technique used for it came from the Middle East to Islamic Spain through the island of Majorca, where the name majolica came from,” explains Lambooy. “In the 16th Century it then went to Faenza, where faience pottery comes from, and then to France.” A lot of Huguenots (French Protestants) then fled to Antwerp to escape persecution but following the fall of Antwerp to Spanish Catholic forces in 1585 these refugees were forced to flee further north. “Potters with Italian roots moved everywhere,” says Lambooy, “although it’s unknown why Delft exploded to become the centre”.
One theory is that beer breweries fell into disuse, allowing potters to take them over, and the fact that Delft was a major centre of the Dutch East India Company meant that there were plenty of Chinese originals for them to imitate. Whatever the case, after a period of experimentation the potters of Delft were producing pieces with all the characteristics of tin-glazed Delftware as we know it by 1620.
Although Delftware was created as a cheaper alternative to Chinese porcelain, which remained in great demand throughout the 17th Century, the ceramics produced were still the finest in Europe. Elites from across the continent, including the Sun King himself, Louis XIV, would order pieces.
Connect with colonialism:
Smaller Delftware items such as pots for exotic spices, including cloves, mace, cinnamon and pepper are an indication of the Dutch Republic’s colonial expansion, no doubt a source of pride for William and Mary. But the monopoly the Dutch East India Company had on the spice trade had a devastating impact on indigenous populations. A more explicit indication of the impact of colonialism can be found in a number of unusual Delft vases which are Chinese-influenced in every way – except for their depiction of black slaves. Although there is no evidence that enslaved people worked in the Delft potteries, whoever designed the vases was more than aware that slavery was part of Dutch culture, both at home and in the colonies.
Terracotta Warriors
From the mausoleum of the first Qin Emperor of China
c. 221 - 206 B. C. E.
Qin Dynasty
A vast underground city guarded by a life-size terracotta army including warriors, infantrymen, horses, chariots and all their attendant armor and weaponry. A sprawling citadel, complete with gardens and stables, bronze ritual vessels, jade jewelry, and a wealth of gold and silver ornaments.
Terracotta is an unglazed brownish-red clay that has been fired once. Closest example are the pots sold at hardware stores for planting house/outdoor plants.
Painted terracotta, Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shaanxi, China
(photo: Keith Marshall, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
(photo: Keith Marshall, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Painted terracotta, Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shaanxi, China
The First Emperor is known for stunning innovations that consolidated his rule through modernization. During his reign, he introduced the standardization of currency, writing, measurements and more. He connected cities and states with advanced systems of roads and canals. He is also credited with continuing the construction of the Great Wall, which is perhaps the most widely-known symbol still associated with China to this day.
Armored infantryman wear body and shoulder armor. Their hands are positioned to hold a lance (left hand) and a crossbow (right hand). They wear their hair in a topknot covered by a soft cap that ties at the back. (photo: Romain Guy, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)
He is regarded as a military genius, and while his methods included massacre and destruction, some claim that his ultimate success at bringing the states together justifies the violence, a necessary cost of nation-building.
The cavalry horses are approximately life-size. They have a saddle
The army includes over 7,000 terracotta warriors horses, chariots and weaponry intended to protect the emperor in the afterlife. The burial complex was first discovered by farmers in 1974.
Above info
Source link:
Yiren Shen, College Intern at The Metropolitan Museum in New York, posted a great research article on the making of the Terracotta Warriors ini 2017.
To read full article go to link below.
1. Preparing the Clay
The researchers mixed local yellow earth with grit. To ensure the evenness of the inner structure of clay, they stirred the mixture and immersed it in water while constantly beating it. Then they stored the prepared clay within containers to keep it moist for future use.
2. Building the Statue
The researchers made the statue by coiling clay strips, which explains why it is hollow. No armature was found inside the torso; the statue kept its balance with its own weight. The researchers speculated that some external support, such as linen or clay, might have been used to make sure that the body would not fall over during the building process.
After they had made the feet, they only added about 10 cm per day. The researchers paid special attention to the inner shape of the statue, since the center of gravity would shift as they added more bulk. Therefore, they used wooden sticks to beat the inside of the figure throughout the process. This made the clay body denser, removed air bubbles, and roughened the surface, so that when cracks appeared, they would not reach the innermost part.
The researchers argue that there were two possible methods for constructing the arms. They believe that the arms could have been made from the bottom up and built simultaneously with the torso, then closed up when they arrived at shoulder level. Or, the arms might have been extended after the torso was complete. Accordingly, the builders used the coiling technique to attach smaller clay strips next to the torso, and closed up the arms and the torso when they reached the same level.
3. Carving the Details
The researchers used both an addition and a subtraction method for carving details. They also used bamboo strips to smooth the surface at this stage.
4. Drying Process
During the lengthy process of drying the figures in the shade, the researchers applied dampened fabric on the surface of the statue to keep the clay plastic.
5. Making the Head
Again, the researchers used the coiling technique, but they applied a second layer of clay on top of the base, so that they could carve the facial details.
6. Firing Process
The researchers constructed the kiln inside the mausoleum site itself. The kiln can fit four reconstructed warrior statues at the same time. The weight of each statue was between 150 and 200 kg, and it took about six to 10 hours to fire the whole body evenly at over 1652° F. Sometimes the head was put on the body while firing and sometimes it was fired next to the body, depending on the weight of the head.
Read more and see images:
Friday, September 2, 2022
Dan Elborne, Visual Artist, Australian
Deathgate is a ceramic installation artwork comprising 1.3 million handmade pieces, each representing one person detained in the Auschwitz network of concentration camps.
Pinched clay, variable large-scale dimensions, 2015-2018.
Principally, the time and labour involved in producing this work is where its conceptual basis lies. The objects have been created in comparative reference to the stones that cover and surround the railway, which was used as the main mode of prisoner transportation into the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) extermination camp. Utilising a wide range of clay types and a process completely reliant on the hands of the artist; I have produced each ceramic ‘stone’ to feature a fingerprint: an index of human interaction. This is intended as both a reductive exercise in considering the treatment of those victimised, but also as a way to create retrospective evidence. This evidence demonstrates that beyond the surface of largely incomprehensible statistics, is the reality of lived and felt human history.
The work is presented as two separate beds of ceramic ‘stones’. One bed contains 1.1 million pieces, and the other; 200,000 pieces. This gives a direct visual reference to the number of deaths (1.1 million) compared with those who survived the Auschwitz camps (200,000).
Aesthetically, the installation is reminiscent of the railway leading through the main entrance of Auschwitz II, also known as 'the death gate’. Various elements of the work, including the colour ratio of chosen clay types and the size of the ceramic ‘stones’ directly respond to personal impressions and reference images taken while visiting the Auschwitz camps in January 2016. In no way does the work aim to wholly represent what was experienced by those victimised, but instead, references the history from an overarching and reflective standpoint. It is by attempting representation that I wish to invoke an imaginative sense of totality.
Alongside the reference to a railway line, the objects I have created acknowledge a Jewish tradition that involves placing stones on grave-sites. This practice has been interpreted in various ways but is commonly considered as a way to honour those lost. This is through an object which, unlike flowers that wither and die, encourages the metaphorical idea of permanence as it applies to remembering.
On June 28, 2015, I began developing this project and produced the first ceramic ‘stone’. This determined the completion date for Deathgate to be on November 21, 2018. Totalling 1,242 days or 3 years, 4 months and 24 days, the start-to-finish production of Deathgate directly corresponds with the mass killing of prisoners in the Auschwitz network of camps, where the first large-scale gassing of prisoners occurred on September 3, 1941, and ensued in various forms until the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.
I intend for the work to not just reference those detained in the Auschwitz camps, but to be considered as a relative fraction of the total amount of Holocaust victims (6 million). The work aims to memorialise this unconscionable event while questioning the role of art in remembering such history. More broadly, the work speaks of abhorrence and the ongoing nature of prejudice, discrimination and genocide. If anything, the crucial intent of the work is for it to act as a contemplative agent and an exercise in empathy, both for myself and viewers alike.
An digital version of the self-published catalogue for this artwork can be viewed here, which includes process and original reference photographs, an essay by artist, art critic and theorist Sandy Pottinger and a foreword by Dr Lachlan Malone.
Artist Website:
Anna Kruse, Ceramic Artist, United States
Unfired Clay
Using unfired clay as subject for photography.
More to see on artist website:
Nicole Rene Woodard, Ceramic Artist, United States
Inspiration for Figurative Bust prompt in 22 Sculptures Assignment.
Ceramic with ceramic glaze pencils.
Artist website:
Dorchester Industrial School for Girls, Winchester, Massachusetts
The source did not identify the dolls as ceramic. However, I think, from examining the images, the forms are ceramic. If not, the forms can still offer inspiration for personal projects in our ceramic sculpture class.
No two dolls were alike. For some girls, their doll may have been their only possession.
(Boston City Archaeology Program)
(Boston City Archaeology Program)
During the summer of 2015, City Archaeologist Joe Bagley and his team of volunteers from the City Archaeology Program conducted an archaeological dig at the site of the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls. They recovered 17,723 artifacts, the majority of which were deposited between 1859 and 1880. Their finds offer an intimate glimpse into the school’s operations and its occupants.
Prospective students went through an application process. In order to qualify for admission, the girls had to come from destitute families. For many, this meant their parent(s) were unable to support them financially, were prone to drinking and/or were incarcerated. In other cases, the parent(s) were noted as ill, absent, or dead. By 1858, their popularity had grown such that for every one girl they accepted into the school, they had to turn away two. They felt it was important to “work thoroughly with a few than superficially for many.”
When the school first opened, students accepted ranged in age from six years to fifteen years old, but by 1898 the directors raised the minimum age to eleven. Initially, the girls were educated, trained, and lived in the school, but by 1881 the girls began to attend Dorchester’s public schools and returned for their vocational training at the Centre Street property in the afternoons. The yard offered space for the girls to play and “not disturb the neighbors,” and accommodated their garden, which provided fresh food for their meals. Although the school did not affiliate with any religious organizations, the girls did attend the local Congregational Church.
The Dorchester Industrial School for Girls provided a unique system of individual guardianship. When the school placed girls into homes to work as domestic servants, they assigned each girl a guardian (usually a school manager), who checked in on the girl to make sure her placement was a satisfactory one. This relationship often lasted for years. This program was unusual, as most industrial schools ended their responsibility to their students once they left. The Dorchester school’s program was so unique that it was a topic of discussion at conferences and in professional publications.
More to see and read on source link:
Clovy Tsuchiya, Ceramic Arist, United States
Inspiration for making a pieces that has a resting place for an individual, removable piece(s).
Jacqueline Bishop, Artist Explores History of Fine China Plates
Images of plates copyright Jenny Harper
Article credit to Serena Fokscchaner, September 10, 2021
Source:
Indelicate truths — an artist’s depiction of slavery on fine china
When Jacqueline Bishop looks back to her childhood in 1970s Jamaica, one image springs to mind. For an imaginative child, her grandmother’s china cabinet exerted a particular fascination. Behind its glass doors lay another world. The gold-rimmed porcelain plates with images of carriages, castles and waltzing couples offered glimpses of an exotic, faraway Europe.
Today Bishop, a writer, artist and academic, has a different perspective. While recently researching the history of her grandmother’s collection she uncovered uncomfortable facts. “In the 18th century, fine china was made for the luxury market. That prompted the question: where did its consumers get their money?” In many instances, “it came from sugar and the plantations worked by slaves”, says Bishop, a professor of liberal studies at New York University.
“This was a time when Londoners aspired to be as rich as a West Indian planter. [Alderman] William Beckford — whose wealth came from his Jamaican plantations — twice held the office of Lord Mayor of London,” says Bishop, who undertook her research in Britain. “The French, British, Dutch and Spanish families who for many centuries governed the Caribbean are all in one way or another, implicated in — and benefited from — slavery.” The royal families of those countries often featured on the plates, she says.
To reveal the truth behind her family’s pottery, Bishop designed an alternative dinner service. For this month’s British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent she has produced 18 plates that depict the history of Caribbean enslavement by “reversing the narrative”. Stark images of hangings or auctions are juxtaposed with vibrant flora and fauna. The results, while printed on delicate Staffordshire porcelain, are shocking.
“I wanted my dishes to be as appealing as conventional china, even though their history is difficult. My grandmother’s plates gave her a great deal of pleasure. For her generation they were some of the finest things you had in your home. I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that I also love those ceramics,” she says.
A catalyst for the project was the discovery of 19th-century postcards brought back from Jamaica as souvenirs by visitors. Artists such as the French engraver, lithographer and printer Adolphe Duperly, who established his photography studio on the island in the 1830s, depicted a tropical Arcadia of lush vegetation and “picturesque” inhabitants.
“The postcards presented a particular view of the island. They were painted to lure others to come to Jamaica while obscuring the truth. I wanted my plates to tell a different story,” says Bishop.
She drew on historical images: illustrations, paintings and watercolours found online were cut out to make collages which were then digitally tweaked before being printed on to the unglazed pottery. The effect replicates transfer printing, a mechanical method of decoration using copperplate engravings developed during the 1750s in Stoke-on-Trent, hub of Britain’s ceramics industry, where Bishop’s plates were made.
A photograph of sugar cane cutters in Jamaica, c1905, Adolphe Duperly & Sons
© The Print Collector/Alamy
In the 18th century, the Staffordshire “Potteries” or “Six Towns”, (Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke and Tunstall, which now make up the city of Stoke-on-Trent), also produced one of slavery’s most prominent opponents. Sir Josiah Wedgwood could have chosen to obey market forces “and run with the money”, says Bishop. Instead, the potter became an abolitionist.
In 1787 he designed a medallion in which a chained slave is accompanied by the inscription: “Am I not a man and a brother?” Thousands of these protest cameos were distributed for free at meetings. A batch was even sent to Benjamin Franklin.
The horrors of slavery are brought to life on Bishop’s ceramics. One plate depicts a flogging, another the branding of a slave. From the next, a woman gazes out, her neck clamped in an iron brace, a mask strapped across her mouth. Instead of carriages and castles, we see man’s cruelty. Bishop does not spare us the details. Women dominate the vignettes. Subjected to beatings and rape, female slaves suffered greatly at the hands of their owners.
Bishop also emphasises their grace and fortitude. At a slave auction, a mother and daughter are clasped in a farewell embrace before being sold. “White artists often eroticised black women. They failed to convey their essential femininity,” says Bishop, whose most recent book is Gift of Music and Song: Interviews with Jamaican Women Writers.
“I wanted to render their beauty, however horrible their circumstances.” There is beauty too in the violet-blue lignum vitae or scarlet hibiscus flowers that frame the figures: a contrast to the cruelty.
Bishop chose these vibrant motifs for their historical significance. Jamaica’s national emblem, the hummingbird, was catnip to white hunters who displayed their exotic, taxidermied trophies in cabinets. Orchids were sought by plant hunters to be cultivated in hothouses as emblems of wealth.
Bishop learnt about her family’s history of slavery from her great-grandfather, a farmer of Scottish-Irish descent. “He’d take me on walks in the countryside and tell me stories. He believed in a world you could not see. He brought my ancestral world vividly alive.”
Jacqueline Bishop, writer, artist and academic: ‘I wanted my dishes to be as appealing as conventional china, even though their history is difficult’ © Jermaine Dawkins
Until their emancipation in 1838, Jamaican slaves grew their own food on often meagre provision plots. Surplus was sold via the market woman — a colourful figure in Bishop’s pottery — balancing a tray of produce on her head, a child strapped to her back. “The market woman is a constant in Jamaican society. By selling produce she laid the foundation for the peasantry after emancipation,” says Bishop, whose great-grandmother was a market woman. “Inevitably, she wanted something different for her children.” Bishop was the first in her family to go to university.
At the biennial her dinnerware will be shown in antique cabinets made from mahogany in a former 19th-century warehouse. Bishop hopes they will entice visitors to look again: “Slavery is a fraught subject. But if we confront history squarely in the face we can all learn and start to move forwards. I hope my plates will be part of that process.”
“History at the Dinner Table”, part of British Ceramics Biennial, September 11-October 7; britishceramicsbiennial.com
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Raven Halfmoon, Ceramic Artist, United States
Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation) is from Norman, Oklahoma. She attended the University of Arkansas where she earned a double Bachelors Degree in ceramics/painting and cultural anthropology. Her work has been featured in multiple exhibitions throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Raven is currently based in Helena, MT where she is a artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts. She is represented by Kouri + Corrao Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
More to see on artist website:
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