Not Without Meaning: Exploring Content in Functional Pottery

(a paper delivered at the 1995 College Art Association Meeting) Gail Kendall Copyright 1995

A response to a work of art in any form or medium is based on a mixture of tangible, concrete understanding, and ephemeral, elusive and intuitive impressions; a combination of what one knows, and what one feels. There are those who believe that functional art objects are fatally limited by their usefulness and thus devoid of content. I support a different idea; that function is one more consideration of the many that comprise meaning in art. Indeed, functional considerations are unique in the way they engage a range of our senses and serve to promote additional access to understanding and relationship. Consider this soy sauce bottle (slide) made by Mark Pharis, a contemporary American potter. The pot is six or so inches high. It is a hand-built piece, which employs an innovative technique, to my knowledge invented by Pharis. It gives the appearance of having been constructed in an unfussy, if not unhurried, manner. I observe the joins of handle and spout to the body of the piece which tell me how it was put together. I notice that Pharis sliced and overlapped sections to pull the form in at the neck. I think its surface, which feels stony and slightly bumpy, is subtly colored and textured due to the wood firing it underwent. Its form and scale describe and facilitate its function: The substantial handle encourages me to pick it up. The size of the pouring spout looks appears to provide easy control over how much pours out, as is desirable in a bottle that may contain a strongly flavored substance. The lid, which is designed to extend down over a tallish neck maintains its secure position on the base even when severely tipped for pouring; all in all a design that increases the enjoyment and efficiency of the user. The earthy colors work as a reference to the material of which the pot is made, as to the material it is designed to contain. This pot contains specific historical and cultural references which can be apprehended according to my understanding of the history of ceramics and

the functional uses of particular kinds of pots. In spite of unique construction methods it has many characteristics that refer to a mixture of folk art traditions and peasant pottery, for example; the earthy character of the stoneware temperature clay, the direct and spontaneous feel of the decoration, and the affects of the wood ash on the surface. The surface of the clay has not been scraped, smoothed, sanded, or otherwise treated to rub out what in some more elaborate and refined traditions, might be considered imperfections.

This small useful pot sets my mind to considering the many aspects of its nature. In technical, cultural, formal and symbolic ways it challenges me intellectually and emotionally, and thus I imbue it with meaning and relevance. In viewing a pot a large and varied set of questions arise. We may ask: - What do we know about the maker? - When and where did he or she live? - What is or was her status as a potter or artist? - Who are his mentors and promoters? - What was his role in executing the piece: is it one of a series? Is it one of a kind? Were assistants involved in making it? - How much did this pot cost? - Who purchased it and from where? - Where is it now. in a museum, a corporate collection, an important private collection, on a kitchen table? - What historical and political events affected the making of this pot? - What popular movements in art influenced its design? - In what ways have material considerations of available resources

affected its outcome? - Is the pot part of a defined tradition or does it stand outside or defy a set tradition and its values? These questions when answered, rightly or wrongly, alter our perception of the piece before us. In 1994, while living in England I spent time with a few museum collections examining Staffordshire pottery. Pat Halfpenny, the Keeper of Ceramics at the City Museum of Stoke-On-Trent, where I worked part of each week, is a great storyteller. She changed my understanding of the history of Staffordshire pottery in several important ways. I had the notion, based on readings, that slipware potters of the 17th century were "farmer-potters", throwing and selling pots (slide) when the harvest was over and sewing and reaping crops during the growing season. In truth, they were the manufacturers of pots that have turned up in excavations of settlements in Alexandria, Virginia and other places in what were then "the colonies", proving that they were made in quantities large enough to be exported. Like most settled peasants in 17th and 18th century England, they had their allotment, upon which they gardened, kept a few chickens, and maybe a cow. Josiah Wedgwood is commonly credited with inventing the concept of the pottery factory. He was born in 1730, but in fact, Staffordshire pots were being exported to the colonies in droves from 1720 onward. When Wedgwood founded his factory in Etruria, what is now a part of Stoke-onTrent, there were already over two dozen manufacturing firms employing at least fifteen people each. Wedgwood expanded on a form of production that was well in place before he was born. This teapot (slide) refers to a Chinese prototype which was being imported into England by the shipload in the 18th century. Pat Halfpenny corrected my errant identification of this kind of work as Wedgwood-Whieldon, a product of the fertile partnership of Thomas Whieldon and the young Josiah Wedgwood. The potteries rampantly appropriated each others designs and things were rarely signed. This may not accurately be called WedgewoodWhieldon, but should be referred to as 18th Century Staffordshire Pottery. Additionally, I have had to set aside the a presumption, based on the glazing, that Thomas Whieldon and friends were influenced by T'ang dynasty

pots in some of their wares. Archeological and historical evidence indicates that T'ang dynasty pots did not arrive in Great Britain until the 19th c. These anecdotes show how the context in which a pot is made may add to our understanding and appreciation of it. Having some of my ideas debunked has significantly changed the way in which I relate to the objects in question. I no longer view the 18th century Staffordshire teapot as quite so mass-produced....in part because upon handling it I was able to discover that it was hand-made on a potters wheel or hand-pressed into a mold, ....nor do I view the slipware platter as a unique personal expression of one potter's ideas. The two kinds of pots have come much closer together, with both of them, to my mind, arising from and continuing a tradition of pottery making that existed in parts of England from the 17th century until the middle of the 20th century; a tradition in which the master potter, typically an individual who moved up through the apprenticeship system of various potteries and knew all of the techniques employed in the factory, was also a masterful businessman involved in marketing pots worldwide. Marketing and pricing are powerful symbols, which refer to inherent value and affect the nature of the meaning with which we imbue an art object. This Agateware Staffordshire teapot (slide) in mint condition will cost a collector many thousands of dollars. This teapot (slide) by Jeff Oestreich cost about one thousand dollars. I bought this bowl (slide) from the pot vendor in Segu, Mali for 50 cents. In certain ways each of these pieces is rare. Oestreich has quit making these kind of thrown and altered teapots. The Agateware teapot may be the only extant example outside a museum collection. Its unlikely I will visit that pot vendor again, or see these particular kind of Malian ceramics elsewhere. Given that I own both the Segu bowl and the Oestreich teapot do I assign the expensive one the cherished spot on an antique console while using the cheap one until it breaks? If I were a collector, the meaning of the piece might reside heavily in the value and rarity of the object. In that case, all of these works would be for display only, as each is possibly equally difficult to come by or replace. If I were an investor, I would put the expensive ones out of reach entirely. Since I value experiencing the functional aspects of pottery I use them. If or when they crack or chip I exile them to the display cabinet. We can see that meaning and significance shift according to the intention of the individual in charge of the object. Thus far I have talked about some tangible considerations with which we can ascribe meaning to pottery. In the remaining time I am going to turn to

considerations which arise from experiential sources, which are ephemeral and, as a consequence, more difficult to qualify. All pots, from the sublime to the wretched hold in common a connection to a few very powerful metaphors. The most apparent is the metaphorical relationship all pots have to the human body. Language, which has evolved to describe pots, reveals the directness of the comparison. We speak of a pot having a lip, neck, shoulder, belly, hip, sometimes a waist. It rests on a foot and we speak of its stance. This might be attributed to the cultural urge to anthropomorphize everything, but the connection goes a bit farther. It could be said that one of the primary roles of functional ceramics is to conveniently join our digestive tract to the external world. Certainly food has been stored, cooked and served in pottery for at least 4000 years. While I can't attest to the long history of ceramic "sanitary ware" we all know where to find some when we need it, so it, too, is pervasive. Deciding upon the "right" cup (slides) for that morning infusion of caffeine means not only finding which of the dozens in the cupboard holds just the right amount of coffee and steamed milk, but which one most insinuates itself into the hand of the drinker, which one feels the most pleasing today. In holding a handmade cup, exploring its tactile qualities and the subtleties of its form and surface a person is repeating the forming process and in a visceral way engaging in a relationship with the potter. The pot becomes a metaphor for creativity and human potential. This unique relationship between potter and user infuses the act of drinking with ritual possibilities, enhancing this simple activity in ways which can have profound affects on an individuals notions of what it is to be alive. If one has many pots employed in food storage, this represents a metabolic potential for the future. The pot as a container symbolizes the body as container. Pottery throughout the ages has been employed in the service of that human container by facilitating our most basic needs for sustenance, thus playing an important role in self and community preservation. The process from which the pot emerges from clay mined from the earth, through forming and firing parallels a human life-cycle in which the process from birth to maturity involves rites of passage which include the "passing through the fire" metaphor, common to many cultures, past and present. The fragile nature of pottery alludes to human disintegration and death. Further considerations, which could engage us in a fertile exploration for

more time than we can expend here include: How a favorite object can transform a mundane activity into a private or communal ritual or ceremony. How formal and aesthetic qualities raise one pot above another Whether or not excellence affects meaning. How the container/containment aspects of pots allude to many other containers, such as buildings and cocoons and how those references to containment affect our perception of a pot. Herbert Read said: Pottery is the most simple and the most abstract of all art forms. Is this high praise, or a backhanded complement? The fact is that ceramic vessels are found in almost every culture on the planet and span the history of human communities. The vessel as archetypal image (slide) is psychologically and culturally universal. As a significant icon, embedded in the collective unconscious, as mighty metaphor, as embodiment of the complexity of inside/outside (the basis of its abstraction), the pot remains, at once, both mysterious and vital.