Darwin
Low fire, underglaze and glaze
Approximately 12 inches tall with smaller surrounding ceramic forms.
Charles Darwin is best known for his contribution to the theory of
evolution. Most people are unaware of the relationship between Darwin and the
Wedgwood family. Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730. He was an artist, entrepreneur, and
abolitionist. In 1759 he established the, ultimately very successful, Wedgwood ceramics
company. In 1839 Charles Darwin married Josiah’s granddaughter, Emma Wedgwood. The Wedgwood money financed Darwin’s research.
I find this connection between
Darwin’s theories and clay production most interesting as several recent scientific articles have
discussed the probability of the role of clay in providing a structured environment that allowed
for the birth of proteins and ultimately DNA. A couple of these articles include Before Cells, Biochemicals May Have Combined in Clay by author Bill Steele found in the Cornell
Chronicles and Clays and the Origin of Life: The Experiments by authors Jacob Teunis
Kloprogge and Hyman Hartman found in the journal Life.
My ceramic sculpture was designed to visually marry the scientific work of
Charles Darwin with the Wedgwood fortune that financed it. The bust is presented as a piece
of Jasperware, a style of ceramics created by Josiah Wedgewood that used a matte blue glaze
reminiscent of “robin’s egg blue” with white cameo-like structures affixed to the surface. These
raised structures illustrate both the story of evolution and some of the decorative
embellishments that the Wedgwood’s might have used on their Jasperware. The smaller pieces surrounding the bust depict the creatures that were discovered
during Darwin’s expedition to the Galapagos Islands.
In Process
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