How to Make a Wedding Photo, Winter, 2009

From 2009, How to Make A Wedding Photo  SOLD

How to Make A Wedding Photo, Winter 2009, (four views, including one at the end showing scale) - Featuring me with a group of friends in Iran. We're looking at the wedding photos for one of the women on the pot. They're showing me how they photoshopped the event into an Austrian fairytale wedding complete with castle, white horse and snowy woodland. (They live in the central Iranian desert.)

British Ceramics Biennianl: Display of five of my pots in the Award Show 2013, at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery

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This post is in response to some of the questions I have been asked since my five pots went on display at the British Ceramics Biennial as part of the Award Show 2013.

The following links will take you to more images of the pots and some of the events and stories that prompted me to make them.

The above image is a selection of five of my pots at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent. From left to right the pots are: Travelling West, St. Mark of the Farm, Pageant, Nothing Like a Kiss, (slightly in front and lower down,) and, far right, ‘Remembering Atefeh.’

Travelling West

Travelling West was made especially for BCB and has yet to be photographed by itself. I have written a post, outlining the story that it depicts. The post is directly below this one. The images are phone photos taken in my studio. They are a ‘tour’ of pot, turning anti-clockwise.

St. Mark of the Farm

My blog post about this is as a companion piece to another pot, Wedding Procession, and can be seen here with images of both pots. The first image shows both pots, with St. Mark of the Farm on the left. The next two images are both view of St. Mark of the Farm. There is a detailed account of the story and landscapes that feature on the pot, (it depicts the funeral of Mark Duggan). It was done as a ‘tryptich.’ There are three main views to the pot, which borrows from the convention of the Renaissance altar-piece. There is more in the blog post to explain this decision and also the title. More images can be seen here.

Pageant

More images of Pageant can be seen here. A general introduction to the exhibition, ‘An Extraordinary Turn of Events,’ of which it was a part, is here.

There’s Nothing Like a Kiss

My Blog post is here. Images of this pot and the two others in Molly’s Odyssey, can be seen here on my page of Francis Kyle Gallerywebsite.

Remembering Atefeh

More images of this pot, including the interior imagery, can be seen here. There story of Atefeh and of the making of the pot is here.

Travelling West

The Journey
Travelling West depicts the journey of my friend  Hossein, as he travelled overland from his home town, Qazvin, in Western Iran, to England, seeking asylum. He left at Iranian New Year, March 2006, and arrived at a service station on the M1 in June the same year.  During the three months he travelled by bus to a village close to the Iran –Turkey border. From there he went by truck to another village where he joined the smuggler route to get over the border, travelling through the mountain passes on horse-back to avoid check points. From a village on the Turkish side, he travelled by lorry and on foot: the lorry took the refugees by road but when a check point was in sight, they had to walk, at night, over the mountains to reconnect with the road and another truck on the other side of that check point. From the Turkish city of Van, he took a bus to Istanbul, using forged identity papers in case he was questioned at one of the fourteen checkpoints on the way from Eastern to Western Turkey. From Istanbul he went by lorry, with another group, to Ezmir and from there by boat to the Greek mainland and on to Athens. At every point of change, he was passed on to a new trafficker, each one arranged by the one before. From Athens he went by plane to Paris, Orly where he took the metro to Gare du Nord and took the train to Calais. At Calais, in the queue for food, provided by kindly French charity workers, he met an old friend. They made a sleeping place in the cabin of an old crane until, one night, after numerous attempts, they got on a lorry which took them to England, disgorging them all in the car park of a service station on the M1.

Hunger and Danger

This is the simplified outline of the journey, the bare bones, if you like. The full story includes constant and gnawing fear and anxiety, not knowing who he would encounter next, what the trafficker would be like, what his fellow travellers would be like, what the conditions of travel were like: the boat, for example, was not seaworthy and they only just avoided drowning. The traffickers varied, some intensely violent, others, kind souls, themselves trapped in a debt-bondage cycle to another, ‘more senior’ trafficker – a debt-bondage avoided by Hossein himself only because he took a risk and refused the financial demands of his trafficker-in-chief once in England. It was a risk that paid off.  At times he didn’t eat or drink for a week at a time, often at the most arduous points. In the mountains, for example, they had only berries and snow. Even when there was food, it was only bread and tea. The hardest thing though, was the powerlessness, not knowing until the last minute, if the next trafficker would come and if he could do the next stage of the journey or if he would be stuck, locked in a dingy room forever unable even to return to Iran.

Masoud

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What really colours the entire journey, however, are the relationships between Hossein and the people with whom he was connected. His task was to escort two people from Istanbul to London. These two were from a wealthy Qazvin family. The Trafficker-in-Chief, Masoud, was their older brother and Hossein’s former employer. Hossein idolised this man. ‘He was a like a prophet, well educated and always polite. I was only seventeen, from a poor family, and had little education. He taught me everything.’ Masoud’s business, where Hossein was employed, had failed, partly because he was member of an opposition group, the Mujahideen, and was endlessly obstructed by other traders in the bazaar, who were government supporters, and also because he was issued with bogus penalties and fines by government officials. By way of revenge, Masoud become a small-time crook, deliberately defrauding the other traders of considerable amounts of money, and eventually fled Iran, in 2000, to escape his debtors. Masoud had left Hossein in Iran to face both the police and the wrath of the other traders in the bazaar. In the police cell he was beaten and threatened with torture. He could hear the sounds of other prisoners being tortured. Some six years passed during which Hossein was unable to work legally because of his former connections with Masoud. When Masoud eventually contacted Hossein and asked him to escort his brother and neice to England, Hossein eagerly accepted, hoping their friendship might be restored and trusting that Masoud would acknowledge what he had suffered on his behalf and would, somehow, make amends. The plan was to meet Masoud and his brother and niece in Istanbul. Masoud would fly from England, the other two from Iran. They all had money and passports and could do this legally. Hossein had to make his way overland, alone, with no money, no passport and equipped with nothing but his wits and hope. He was to meet them in Istanbul.

The Meeting

When he eventually arrived in Istanbul, hungry, terrified, and with only the clothes he was wearing, his delight on meeting his old employer, friend and mentor was overwhelming. ‘When I met Masoud in Istanbul, we hugged for whole minute. He cooked me a meal. It was a feast.’ Then, later the same evening, came an unexpected twist: ‘They laughed at my clothes. I hadn’t been able to wash. I knew I didn’t smell good. Masoud bought me new clothes and a tooth-brush. Then he demanded I pay him back, even the toothbrush was listed on the bill. For the last six years I had endured beatings and threats in Iran, then risked my life travelling over the mountains and dodging military check points in Turkey. I did all this for him. In return, he presented me with the bill for a toothbrush.’

There was nothing Hossein could do. He was dependent on Masoud who would finance the rest of the journey and, even then, only on the condition that he escort his two relatives.

The realisation that he had lost, not only any hope of reparation and recognition for his loyalty, but also the man he loved most in the world, more, even, than anyone in his family, hit him harder than any of the dangers on the journey. His ‘prophet’ had been replaced by a dangerous criminal and trafficker, a cynical operator bent only on extortion and profit. For a young man, very much alone in the world, the emotional impact was, perhaps, a greater threat to his life than the furious Aegean Sea that almost engulfed them on the next stage of his journey. Though not technically alone at this stage, he was, in some ways, more alone than ever. He had responsibility for two, ‘incompetent and half-witted rich kids.’ He still had his wits but hope for his friendship with Masoud had evaporated entirely. He understood that, far from being a friend, he had sunk from employer, to servant to bonded-serf and, at best, would end up in London in debt to Masoud who would, doubtless, try to get him to become a trafficker too in order to pay off the debt.

Conclusion

Travelling West shows the physical journey. It also depicts Hossein making frequent phone calls. These punctuated every stage of the journey, confirming its progress or not.  They also, gradually, settled the nature of the relationships between Hossein and his family and between Hossein and Masoud. They indicate human connection but they also signify immense loss.

Our traveller arrived at an anonymous motorway service station in June 2006 alone, under threat of debt-bondage, and hungry. Since then he has been slowly rebuilding his life, free of all contact with Masoud and his family having refused to pay off any of the ‘debt.’ Journey’s end, for this first stage of one man’s odyssey seeking asylum in Britain, was in Stoke on Trent, where he was granted asylum in recognition of the political problems that dogged him after Masoud left.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to show Travelling West, for the first time, in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, in Stoke on Trent, as part of my display in the Award Show, 2013, at the British Ceramics Biennial. This is a new work, made especially for the BCB. It is dedicated to my friend, Hosssein, and to all refugees and migrant workers and their extraordinary determination to succeed against the odds.

Letter from the CPA council circulated to CPA members about the future of the organisation as a whole and of Ceramic Review in particular.

The letter above, in two separate images, is the one circulated to CPA members. It seems clear and innocuous enough but is startling in its deceit. The reality is much simpler. The independent editor has been removed and has not been given the choice to return. The new 'guest' editor is a CPA member and, I believe, former chair of the CPA council. The editorial, far from being 'no longer in-house' is about as 'in-house' as it could get. The notion of a 'guest' here is meaningless since there is no editor, as such, to invite the guest. Moreover, and, arguably, even more worrying, there is no mention whatsoever of the writing, editorial, or publishing experience of any of these people comprising this new, collective, editorship. The appointment of Jack Doherty as the new 'guest' editor has now been announced on the Ceramic Review Facebook page. The first comment it attracted sums it all up nicely: 'The maffia (sic) strikes again.'  The first comment to arrive on my share of the document above was, 'What worries me is that the same (one or two) people are now in charge of who gets into the CPA, who gets into Ceramic Art London AND what is published in Ceramic Review.' Quite. I wouldn't argue with a single word of either of those two comments. 

We Are Ceramic Review! An open letter to the CPA regarding the future of CR

This is a post I thought I would never have to write and now do so with considerable regret and concern.

You may have heard - either from Bonnie herself or from other sources - that Dr Bonnie Kemske's contract as Editor of Ceramic Review was recently terminated by the Craft Potters Association. No new editor has been appointed. There are no adverts so far posted seeking a new editor. There appear to be no plans, as yet, to appoint a new editor, and, as things stand at the moment, there is nothing on the CPA website concerning these upheavals at Ceramic Review. Moreover, most CPA members know nothing of these changes. The only member of the CPA council that I have spoken to 'didn't know enough about it' to discuss the issue with me.

** Latest update **  CPA have now informed their members that the Jack Doherty will be the first guest editor but there is still no news on the long term plan for an editor as far as I understand.

In addition to this, we know that promotion of Ceramic Review abroad has been terminated and the focus of the magazine is now to be national only. 

A small group of us have written the following open letter to the CPA calling for an Extraordinary General Meeting so that we can put our concerns to them directly. You may have many more questions you would like to ask. 

Please take a look at the letter here below, which we plan to send to the CPA council with a list of signatories, and, if you agree and would like to add your name, please send an email to weareceramicreview@gmail.com with a YES as your subject line and your name as the message - with any comments you may wish to make, by midnight Friday 20th September. Please also email or share this post via twitter or facebook to anyone you think might also like to add their name. 116 people have so far added their name via email and many more via facebook. Don't forget to send the email or let me know via fb by Friday 20th! 

Many thanks from The C Word

Dear Craft Potters Association Board Members,

We write to express our deep disappointment at the recent removal of Dr Bonnie Kemske as editor of Ceramic Review.

We feel strongly that, under her editorship, the magazine has taken on a new lease of life. Over the last three years we have welcomed the publication’s broader perspective, particularly enjoying the international dimension, and the inclusion of a wide variety of ceramic production. The range of articles about industry, studio pottery, installation work, sculpture, and public and community art projects, have provided an excellent overview of the breadth of production and the scale of ambition that defines our field. 

It is this mix, combined with the international coverage, that gives Ceramic Review its considerable, and currently unparalleled, national and international status.

Our shared concern is that the broad-based appeal of Ceramic Review, its inclusive, democratic, and international content, and tone of open debate, is set to become increasingly conservative and narrow. This would be a great shame. At best, these are very challenging times for magazines. Narrowing the Ceramic Review remit will, almost certainly, reduce its readership and threaten its survival.

Many of us are CPA members, Ceramic Review subscribers and contributors as well as readers. We are all stakeholders in the Ceramic Review enterprise. The welfare and future success of this magazine affects us all. We urge you to retain a progressive and inclusive agenda for Ceramic Review, under an independent editorship.

We would welcome an opportunity to discuss these issues further and call for you to hold an extraordinary general meeting for that purpose.

Signed:

The SCUB Manifesto: The C Word reports from a literary hinterland

The C Word has recently taken up membership of the Society for Cutting up Books. No, this is not the militant wing of a dodgy political pressure group, it is a celebration of that Ur moment when exasperation becomes the creative act that results in the taking up of a Stanley Knife to slice through the spine of a very fat book.

Let me explain. Scubbing is the act of cutting along the length of the spine of a large, heavy paperback  - either a normal ‘cheap’ paperback or one of the glossy text-book sort – and dividing it into smaller, lighter sections, thus creating a number of portable booklets rather then one book which is so heavy you can barely lift it off the shelf. The scubbed sections can then be placed in those nice transparent ‘pockets’ with holes punched down the side and placed in a file for safe-keeping. When taking the tube, bus, a train or just for reading in bed, you need take only one of the sections which is light enough to carry. This vastly increases your chances of reading the book, since, in its original published form, it was too heavy to be taken out of the house and too heavy to read in bed. Let’s face it, how many of us lead the sort of life where we can ‘read in the library’ or ‘in the drawing room?’ Quite. Scubbing, in short, is what you do with books which are not available on Kindle. Where art books are concerned, that’s most of them.

The first book I scubbed was Glen Adamson’s ‘The Craft Reader,’ a magnificent book if only one could hold it up longer than five minutes. It seemed particularly appropriate that this should have been the first. Adamson’s book is published in sections (1-7), – all sewn together in one volume – daft, but no matter. It is an anthology of craft writing. Section 1 deals with the ‘how-to’ writing. In his introduction to the section he writes:

            As is obvious from the sheer volume of instructional publications produced annually, most are never put to direct use. Books are given as gifts or bought on impulse, page through and left on the shelf.

He goes on to say that the voluminous heaps of unread literature have an additional purpose to that intended which is to attest to the aspirations and identity of the would-be reader. Bearing this in mind, and considering that I had only just started reading the book, how could I allow myself to leave this book, unread – or at least unfinished- on the shelf simply because it was too heavy to read on the tube? So began my membership of SCUB. That was almost three years ago. Since then I have scubbed a Lonely Planet Guide to Iran, Salman Rushdie’s, ‘Midnight’s Children,’ and now, I’m happy to say, James Joyces’ ‘Ulysses’ has been so honoured – neatly cut into three manageable morsels and may well be cut again if I need to study another section at close range, as it were. (See the The C Word Supplement for more on this – it concerns my next body of ceramic work, Molly’s Odyssey.) So, my aspirations to being a well-read potter, and the instructions in Adamson’s book as to how to achieve that, are now assured. One more thing: The Craft Reader IS a magnificent book. Much has been said already of its vast scope, its richness and its breadth of understanding of what craft is. I will just add it's worth getting for the excerpt from George Sturt's, 'The Wheelwright's Shop,' alone. Read this and weep! And not just for reasons of the writing. The following extract is from Adamson's introduction to the excerpt:

            Sturt had a basic conviction that it was only through direct, physical experience that one could understand workmanship, or even raw materials: ‘My own eyes know because my hands have felt, but I cannot teach an outsider the difference between Ash that is “touch as whipchord”, and Ash that is “frow as a carrot” or “doaty”, or “biscuity”.’

Ends

The Last Sane Man, Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture, Tanya Harrod, Yale University Press, 2012

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Introduction

Michael Cardew, (1901-1983), was, and still is, one of the most highly regarded potters of the 20^th century. Along with Bernard Leach, he pioneered both the aesthetics and the technical know-how of the modern studio pottery movement, or what we now call ceramics.

Tanya Harrod’s detailed journey through his life and work is an epic sweep across the social, political, and art history of the 20^th century. Her biography opens before Cardew was born with a brief look back at his ancestry, introducing his well to do, highly educated, upper-middle class family, and closes after he dies, looking forward to the impact of his extraordinary legacy which crosses well beyond the borders of craft pottery and the arts to embrace anthropology, politics, and the ecological and alternative movements of the 20^th Century.

Early life and love

Cardew was born and raised in Wimbledon, South-West London, with regular family holidays at a seaside house in Staunton in Devon, where he grew to love the traditional English slipware pottery still being made at nearby Fremington. As a teenager, while doing agricultural work with his school during WWI, he experienced his first male love and subsequent rejection. While his love of slipware flourished, his love of other men became highly conflicted and was largely closeted throughout his life; he longed for ‘normality,’ for marriage and children.

He studied Classics at Oxford but then rejected the expected career of a socially privileged, scholarly male and, instead, pursued his love of pottery. He trained with Bernard Leach in St. Ives and, within a few years, set up his first pottery, retrieving the abandoned kiln and workshops at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. Here he had success in both his pottery ambitions and in love but, nonetheless, longed to return to Cornwall. It was at Winchcombe that he met and married Mariel Russell and where their three children were born. Here too he developed his life-long preference for ‘austerity.’ He rejected what he referred to as ‘bourgeois’ affectations, preferring the sometimes harsh conditions of the struggling rural potter.

Cornwall and West Africa

In 1939, he left Winchombe with Mariel and the children to realise the dream and set up the Conrnwall pottery at Wenford Bridge. This saw the beginning of a series of disastrous firings and relentless, unforgiving struggle. With the onset of WWII Cardew decided to leave Mariel and the children to cope with the inconclusive chaos at Wenford and, in 1942, got a posting to Ghana, then called the Gold Coast and still a British Colony. Here, at Achimota, he set up what would be the first of three pottery workshops in West Africa. It was also here that he met and formed a lasting relationship with a young man called Clement Kofi Athey. After Achimota, he went with ‘Kofi’ to Vume on the Volta River, and set up the second workshop. The third was near Abuja, in Northern Nigeria.

For five years, the failed firings continued but, at the point of transferring to Abuja, with an adjustment to the kiln design, they began to yield much needed success. It was also in Abuja that Ladi Kwali, an immensely gifted Nigerian potter, using traditional handbuilding methods, joined Cardew and his team and learnt to use the wheel and work with stoneware and glazes, while also doing with her own work. Ladi Kwali later became a major star, touring the USA with ‘Kofi’ and Cardew and also visiting the UK. Cardew left Nigeria in 1963, after independence, and returned to Wenford Bridge. Mariel was living in London now but regularly visited Wenford. 'Kofi' also came to Wenford for some time but returned to Ghana and Cardew continued to visit him there. Over the next twenty years, Wenford Bridge became a magnet for aspiring studio potters from all over the world and Cardew did numerous speaking tours to USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Conclusion

Michael Cardew’s working life spanned sixty years, (1923-83), in Britain and West Africa. Tanya Harrod navigates this vast and complicated historical terrain with formidable political agility. She applies forensic critical scrutiny to the colonial context of working, personal and romantic relationships as well as to the wider social contexts. We learn about Nigerian contemporary art movements and evolving independence movements in both Ghana and Nigeria. Cardew’s tours of the USA and Canada and his relationships there are all explored in the context of the civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, gay rights and ecology movements.

We hear the voice of Clement Kofi Athey from his letters and through others who knew him. He does not appear only as a colonial ‘subject’ but as an active player with his own concerns and priorities. We also hear the opinions and memories of the villagers at Vume and Abuja from interviews and site visits. We hear from Mariel’s friends, colleagues and associates, as well as from her own letters and diaries. Harrod brings an admirably cool head combined with considerable compassion to the complicated tangle of both homosexual and heterosexual relationships, enabling a fully rounded picture of all concerned to emerge.

Cardew eschewed industrial processes, insisting on developing a pottery ‘from the ground up,’ starting with making and firing the kiln bricks, digging up local clay and grinding rocks for glaze materials. Undaunted, Harrod deftly picks her way through the details of craft pottery - the firing temperatures, the nature and feel of the clay, the machinery and general grub and grit as well of the science and aesthetics of the business.

This is painstaking historical research combined with fluent, inspired storytelling. It’s a glorious book, one that will live near you and will be read and reread, argued over and discussed. Buy it new - second hand copies will be rarer than hen’s teeth!