Passion For China

Molly Hatch

Description

'As we move through our daily lives, eating breakfast, sipping an afternoon cup of tea or gathering for a family dinner, the patterned ceramic objects we live with are precious witnesses to our stories. We eat from them, they warm our hands after a cold walk outdoors and we pull them out to celebrate the births, marriages and lives of our loved ones.' A Passion for China is a personal celebration of the everyday beauty of tableware. Acclaimed ceramicist, artist and designer Molly Hatch explores the family stories behind beloved items; the bowls and cups we have inherited or chosen with love and care. Molly Hatch also brings the history of porcelain, potteries and patterns to life with an informal eye for fascinating detail.A tribute to the rich heritage of the vintage plates, jugs and pots that make our homes our own.

Informations

• Publié par: September Publishing
• Date de parution: 10 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781910463345
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

A PASSION FOR CHINA

A PASSION FOR CHINA

Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. - Virginia Woolf The Waves

Introduction 11
Chapter 1
Grandmother s House 15
Chapter 2
What I Learned at the Museum 59
Chapter 3
In the Studio 107
Chapter 4
Popular Patterns 137
Acknowledgements 171
Photo credits 173
About the author 175

For my daughter Camilla

INTRODUCTION
As we move through our daily lives, casually eating breakfast, sipping a leisurely afternoon cup of tea or gathering for a family dinner, the patterned ceramic objects we live with are precious witnesses to our stories. We eat from them, they warm our hands after a cold walk outdoors, we pull them out to celebrate the births, marriages and lives of our loved ones, we sometimes drop them carelessly or smash them in anger, and then we work to delicately glue them back together. Their familiarity becomes a part of our sense of ourselves, a sense of our home.
This book began because I wanted to revisit and learn more about the china I loved in my childhood. Where did the pieces come from? Who had them before my grandmother? What provenance has been lost that I could regain? If these objects could talk, what stories would they tell?
Looking at the family china, full of memory and meaning to me personally, drove me back to the museums where I first studied. As a young artist, I had relished these beautiful objects in museums, and had studied them within their walls, but I realized I needed to step back and research more in order to truly appreciate what ceramics have meant in human history. Only then could I appreciate the china from my own family history.
The story of how porcelain travelled from East to West is a fabulous one. The museums gave me tales of Queens and Kings, world travellers and explorers and even indentured servitude, and ultimately an understanding behind our collective love of porcelain.
Introduction 11
Museums are the keepers of our larger histories. They record provenance, keep strangers stories and select the objects worthy of study. In creating this book I was reminded that one is never too experienced to learn or too professional to be surprised by the past and how it can inform our present.
Tracing my role as a maker and designer in the lineage of studio potters in the Arts and Crafts movement gave me a chance to illustrate some of the most beautiful, formative studio pottery of the twentieth century.
But, in the end, the journey this book took me on was circular. In the last chapter we return to childhood; to the popular ceramics that inhabit our memories, that laid down an appreciation of colour and pattern in so many of us, and which are still used today.
From the clarity of blue and white to the tangled charm of floral patterns it was here that our passions for porcelain began. A passion that brings joy, but also exploration and knowledge. A never-ending relationship between the handmade, their makers and their holders; the past, the present and the future.
12 Molly Hatch A Passion for China

Grandmother s House
THE THINGS THAT SHAPED ME

My early childhood was spent on an organic dairy farm in Vermont. My parents were back-to-the-land hippies, following a sustenance living model for the majority of my youth. It was a pretty simple childhood - lots of days spent outside, working in the vegetable garden, hauling buckets of water to the animals, feeding baby calves from a bottle, making hay over long hot summers. For the most part, nature and animals were my playmates, the river across the street provided endless hours of entertainment for me and my brother. Life on the farm was largely about being outside. There were many

days hauling and stacking square hay bales onto the back of my father s Chevy truck with the promise of a ride on top of the stack from the field to the hay barn, plus the reward of a cold root beer soda from the store at the end of the day (a rare treat in our house - there was only one general store to purchase food from in our tiny town). There were days weeding in the gardens and even more days harvesting food. I remember one summer in particular when I convinced my parents to grow shell peas by promising to personally shell all the peas myself so that I could have them to eat all winter (they were my favourite vegetable and too expensive to buy from the shop).
16 Molly Hatch A Passion for China
We lived in a large farmhouse built in the 1700s or 1800s. It was the classic clapboard-sided white farmhouse, rambling with additions over the years. The house was big enough that we lived only in one part of it during the winter, not bothering to heat the back half. It was full of furniture that my parents had acquired from their parents. My mother s relatives originally descended from an upper class family and most of the objects I grew up with were inherited from her side. So in many ways our life inside our house was in contrast to our life on the farm. We had silver to eat with, fancy china, a Victorian red velvet couch and even a grandfather clock. Summers were largely spent outside preparing for long winters inside. My mother found time to paint in the winter and there was time for sewing projects; generally a sense of leisure was associated with the indoors as well as the objects I grew up with - compared to time spent outdoors, which for me involved chores on the farm and for my parents was their work.
Chapter 1 Grandmother s House 17
I have many clear memories of the objects I grew up with. I loved the drawers in the Spanish Bargue o writing chest in our living room, which stored lots of little things. I adored sorting through my mother s jewelry and playing with the French faience powder puff that elicited visions of eighteenth- century white wigs and princesses. I particularly loved going to my grandmother Myma s house, where she had a piano, marble lions and huge silver Repouss mirrors, and where she painted in her studio all day. I thought my mother was crazy for not wanting to live like my grandmother - why work on a farm when you could paint all day instead? I aspired to achieve Myma s lifestyle so I studied my grandmother, visited often, talked with her about her life and, in those visits, studied the objects she owned. Sometimes I would even clean her house in an effort to study it. I polished her silver, or vacuumed the living room and dusted the artwork. Much of my interest in ceramics, particularly of the eighteenth century, has stemmed from the objects in my grandmother s home.
18 Molly Hatch A Passion for China
Working on this book has reintroduced me to the objects I have chosen to share with you. As I gathered images of the objects I remembered from my grandmother s home and even from museums, I came to realize that my memory of them wasn t always correct, and often had more to do with a sense of place and a period of time - or even a person. In this way so many objects we live with become animate parts of our family stories and our individual narratives - and, for me, my story as an artist and designer as well. Each object holds its own tale and has seen whole generations come and go. Yet these ceramic objects continue, standing witness to so much, and it is hard not to feel connectivity to the people who owned them before me. Researching the objects more, learning about the time periods they are from and even who made them and for whom and why only adds to my love for these objects.
Chapter 1 Grandmother s House 19
Saucer
I don t know much about where this little saucer came from, but it was part of a larger set with teacups that went with it. I remember having tea parties with them when friends came over, as a little girl. This pattern has long been a favourite in my parents house and this is the last one remaining after all the others have broken. It is chipped on the rim from my father using it a lot - he covers his mug with this saucer, keeping his morning tea hot while it is brewing. I love the little vignette of the house - or perhaps it is a church in the landscape. It is unusual to see a tin-glazed piece with just green and black decoration. It appears to be made in the delft fashion - with a red earthenware clay covered with a white tin glaze and hand-painted brushwork, although the Dutch delft pottery tradition is blue and white. I like that you can see the red clay beneath where the saucer has chipped. It looks like it was painted fast, with sure hands that have painted many versions of this decoration over a lifetime.
20 Molly Hatch A Passion for China
Chapter 1 Grandmother s House 21
Scalloped bowl
This rooster is a small motif in the centre of a scalloped serving bowl that hangs to the left of my parents stove. It has hung in my parents kitchen for as long as I can remember. I always thought the rooster looked a bit angry, but he is a fancy rooster as well. I love that he is standing on the fence - clearly in mid-crow. It embodies a sort of farm life that we actually lived. It is Portuguese, I believe, with a tin glaze and hand-painted. The colour palette influenced how my mother uses colour in her kitchen - especially the yellows, my mother has always liked a yellow kitchen. We never actually used this growing up, it has always hung as a decoration on the wall. I find that kind of remarkable.
22 Molly Hatch A Passion for China
Chapter 1 Grandmother s House 23
Dessert plate
This plate is small, about fifteen centimetres (six inches) in diameter. It matches a set of French covered bowls that I believe are actually for coffee or caf au lait, but my mother has always used them as dessert dishes for puddings. Made with red earthenware clay, they are decorated with a white tin glaze and hand- painted with cobalt blue, yellow, green and pink brushwork, and I believe the pattern is from Brittany.
The dessert plates have many chips in them from use over the ye