Changing context of Ceramic Design - 29.5.2020

Notes of The domestic sphere and the changing context of ceramic design, a contextual lecture delivered by Tessa Peters

Material culture matters

Book: Daniel miller the comfort of things

Ideas of domestic in different perspective(feminine/masculine etc) tying into cultural/historical context

Development of lifestyle:

Living in factory during industrial revolution —> concept of separation of work and leisure was introduced —> Decoration of home came in fashion when wives started to stay home while husband’s out to work

Introduction to china in western world:

-Hugging teapot cartoon: debilitate effect of china-mania

Ethel Sands, tea with sickest, 1911-12:

-Sands’s house was a gathering hotspot for Camden Town artists

-Empty chair as absence of painter

-Floral domination in feminine world of house decoration: furniture matching with floral china teaset

-Personal individualistic intervention of male in feminine space

-Women are always facing back the viewpoint

Including ceramics in painting as representation of classes:

-Delicate china —> middle class

-Everyday brown betty teapot —> lower class

Ww1 and change of taste:

-Willi Bauer (How to live): red crossing victorian luxurious lifestyle

-Aggressive and non acceptable poster design until end of ww1

Rising of economic design: 

-cheaper earthenware with simple design

-Nikolai Suetin (teacup and saucer, 1923), pattern informed by situation in Russian revolution, simple design

-Stacking or multi uses eg bowl as cover of dishes4

-Lily Reich, Bright earth, fired earth, installation at the deutsches - Volk deutsches Arbeit (German people - German work) exhibition in Berlin, 1934

Introduction of modernist ceramics to American public: 

-fiestaware: maternity, good value, economic, accessible, mix and match of colour

-american modern ware (1937): contemporary, modernist, hard to clean?? which didn’t receive good critics when introduced

People pots: organic shape and muted colours

Leonora Carrington, old maids, 1947

-Uncanniness in visual described by freud: Man’s primitive past represent in imaginative thinking

Méret Oppenheim:

-My nurse: high heels serving on plate like chicken, protesting that Lady shoes are fetished with sexual meaning

The berleigh family taking tea at Wilbur crescent, hove, C.H.H. Berleigh, 1947

-Middle class: Family members relaxing 

-Individuality: Woman are on feminine furniture like soft pink sofa with flowers around while man sits in tough wooden chair, everyone has their own mugs now and furnitures matches each’s clothing