The Parlous State of Publishing for Writing about Ceramics.

This post will appear in three parts. it is about the vexed question of how to write and talk about pots, about ceramics, about craft and about art. It's also about where and how publish what we do write. Part one is below. Parts two and three will appear later this week. They're in the pipeline - I'm working on them. There may be another section discussing examples of art-speak, pot-speak, Ceramics' emancipatory inheritance and Ceramics' mythic imaginary - these last two are a bit connected but not entirely. Ready?

Part 1: A moderately short story about writing a book review

Alice was eating toast and marmalade and feeling rather pleased with herself. She’d been sent a big fat glossy, expensive-looking book to review, at least that’s what she thought she had to do. Confrontational Ceramics was the title. She settled down for a quiet morning’s reading – the sort of reading you do with a pencil, note book and those mini post-it notes in different colours for marking special pages. Just for a moment, she felt really quite important. Gradually, as the morning passed, storm clouds gathered, as the sordid truth slowly dawned. The beautiful fat glossy book was dreadful. Dreadful in every way. The text was ghastly - it was only an introduction and then some mini-introductions but, even so, they were enough to put you off the whole thing - and the rest of the book was made up entirely of pictures with something called, ‘artist’s statements’. These apparently were where the artists were allowed to try and bully you into thinking what they thought. Well Alice jolly well wasn’t going to be bullied. She threw the beastly book across the room, and went and consulted the Cheshire Cat. She was, after all, expected to write about the thing. What was she to do?

Well, she wrote the review and let’s just say that, in the process, she learned that it was almost impossible to write a negative review which wasn’t inherently depressing and as unreadable as the book she objected to. She sent it off and it was politely returned. She tried again. It went back and forth for weeks.

‘Try writing about the ‘work’ instead of the text,’ growled the white rabbit, fishing out his gold pocket watch and snarling about academia, while Alice, almost in tears by now, meekly agreed but also snarled. She berated the parlous state of publishing and wondered how to review ‘work’ she hadn’t actually seen.

Then a neighbour publication, ‘Sopra Nova Glittery Handwork’ published its review of the bestial book, and Alice noted that it was written by a Patrician White Patriarch with a very Proper Pottery Pedigree. She also noted that he’d made exactly the same complaints as she had. The White Rabbit emailed: he too had noticed that Alice’s objections, (yer honour) had been upheld by the senior Prefect with the Perfect Pedigree. Alice tried not to feel too smug, and suppressed the ‘I told you so’ that threatened to jump out of her mouth. She wrote the new review, but the bestial book didn’t get any better.

Alice still doesn’t know if the Parish Council Pottery Newsletter will publish the new version or the old version or an amalgamation of the two, or nothing. She still isn’t sure if the senior prefect’s review has somehow made her’s more palatable or not. The White Rabbit seems somewhat mollified, but you can never be sure with rabbits. They take fright easily.

It had been a funny morning. Alice felt strangely satisfied and yet something was still bothering her. The Cheshire Cat still hadn’t uttered. So she thought she’d go and see the Red Queen just to see if she had anything to say on the matter.

Crunching Credit, Ceramics in the City, Confrontational Ceramics, and the Collapse of global Capitalism.

Jackpot!!! A veritable treasure chest of C words to add to the ever-expanding list. Ceramics in the City is now affectionately known at C in the C and Confrontational Ceramics, a vast glossy tome, was sent to me by Ceramic Review, with a request to review the book in 1000 words. With this request I have gladly complied, and I can let you know, in advance of publication, that my review is almost 900 words longer than the text of the book. Ok, slight exaggeration, but suffice to say, it’s yet another of those unspeakable survey books, packed to eaves with hideously glossy pictures and littered with ‘artists’ statements,’ each more turgid than the Journal of Psychiatry.

American Acronyms
So, lets get back to the Credit Crunch. Now it seems that this phenomenon has not yet hit Hackney. Almost everywhere else in the world in now affected: 11 banks in the USA have gone bust, 2 in the UK, President Bush will henceforth be known as the Supreme Leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist States of America, and Maggie May and Donald Duck are building a straw-bale barn somewhere near you where they will swim in the local WAMU and lay AIGs. I’m sure I shouldn’t be so flippant but what else can one do?

Ceramics in the City
Getting back to Hackney, this is where the Geffrye Museum is located, in Kingsland rd, and where the eighth outing of Ceramics in the City bustled with buyers who did, by all accounts, buy. I didn’t get there this year, but I have this information on good authority. All the makers I’ve asked so far have told me it was very well attended and business was brisk. Although results varied for each maker, all have said it was better than most other years. This event took place on the 19th, 20th and 21st of September, the weekend after the announcement of the take over of HBOS by Lloydstsb, which will result in the loss of at least 140,000 jobs and an almost complete collapse of the stock market. Add to that the nationalisation of Northern Rock, near collapse of Bradford and Bingley, rescued by nationalisation, the loss of thousands of jobs when Lehman’s went under and you wonder how it is we’re still selling anything at all. So, encouraging though C in the C’s results obviously are, I am wondering if we shouldn’t all be diversifying – into what I haven’t quite decided, but all imaginative suggestions will be considered.
Just checked google for the spelling of Lehman’s, and found a site, also called Lehman’s in Ohio, which sells butter lamps (ok, oil lamps, but they can easily be converted) and wood burning stoves. I think we might be on to something here.

Lasting vs Disposable
So why are people cheerfully buying handmade pottery at this time, when most of us are facing a winter without heating because we can’t afford the bills, a great may people will be losing their jobs, still more are paying higher interest on their mortgages, others paying higher rents because of competition in the private rented sector because, if you’re on a modest income, you haven’t got a hope in hell of getting a mortgage, and so on? Perhaps longevity is suddenly appealing. Hand made tableware is the very embodiment of the polar opposite of both disposable and conspicuous consumerism. I emphasise handmade tableware because this is what C in the C showcases, arguably, better than any other event I can think of. It also showcases the domestic side of craft, immensely elegantly. The Geffrye is the Museum of the domestic interior, so domestic pottery sits particularly well here.

Terraced Industries
C in the C is a nest of urban potters, many of whom are Londoners. They are experts in ‘old fashioned’ skills such as throwing, (colloquial pottery expression: it means making pots using a potters wheel) and this in itself is unusual these days. Many work full time as potters. They are running what used to be called ‘cottage industries.’ These have now migrated to the city and become ‘terraced industries.’ I suspect such industry could not survive economically in rural areas. Caveat here – Nick Membery is bucking this trend. He has a sophisticated internet selling mechanism, which none of the terraced industry potters do, as far as I know. So I guess his is really, ‘small industry.’ So, in our upside down world of Socialist America with its nationalised banks we can add smart terraced industry migrating to the country, to rural Wales in fact, and peasant industries thriving in Stoke Newington. Now all we need is Serbia to become the world leader in Islamic banking and England to win the world cup. Then I’ll have to go out and buy a new brain, the old one isn’t going to cope.

And Finally...
So, just to acknowledge the last C in the title of this post, are we witnessing the Collapse of global Capitalism? It’s got to be a change in the old world order, surely. I have a feeling it’s not going to be a very comfortable one. I’ve got used to my creature comforts. I’m getting the shed tarted up this week. Just in case a proliferation of C words is the only jackpot I’m going to win.