Fringe Elements

The technique was loose and sloppy.  The imagery bordered on abstraction.  The finished product seemed almost tossed together.  But closer examination reveals an intense, studied effort.  This was 17th century delftware from Southwark on the Thames River, opposite London.

What was going through these potters’ minds?  More to the point, what was going on right outside their doors?

Potters, along with painters, glaziers, weavers, metal smiths, wood workers, and artisans of all sorts congregated in Southwark from the 13th century onwards.  Musicians and actors (including Shakespeare and the famous Rose Theater) joined them.

But "congregated" is a generous term.  "Confined" would be more accurate.  Many of Southwark’s artisans, potters included, were "strangers" or "aliens" – immigrants that is: Dutch, French, German, Spanish, etc.  Most were gathered by the Royal family or other local elites wanting the ‘latest and greatest.’  Alien artisans weren’t allowed to settle within London city limits, however, thanks to collusive efforts of London’s various artisan guilds.  (In a true expression of big city mentality, "foreigners" were English nationals from outside London who, like actors and musicians, weren’t much welcomed either.)

London’s guilds continually petitioned the crown to evict, tax, restrain, or otherwise punish those nasty alien ‘job stealers.’  Guild vitriol curiously belied sentiments echoed a little over 100 years later in the newly independent United Colonies of America – that handiwork of foreign artisans seemed superior to local products.

Back in Southwark, restriction had its advantages.  The London guilds’ more extreme efforts rarely stuck because Southwark was outside the authority of London’s bailiffs.  Southwark was a multicultural and aesthetic melting pot spiced with a righteous dose of siege mentality.  The scene was further powered by caffeine, an exotic new stimulant then flooding English society.

Respectable London saw Southwark as a rough, seedy, blue light district full of prostitutes, thieves, aliens, actors and artisans of all stripes (which it was).  But everyone who was anyone wanted what Southwark offered…

Other English delftware pottery centers of Norwich, Liverpool, and Bristol – port towns all – were similar ‘wretched hives of scum and villainy’ (to paraphrase a famous traveler from a galaxy long ago and far away).  These were the dodgy environments that produced some of the most creative art of the era.

Readings:

The King’s Glass.  Carola Hicks.  Random House/London.  2007

The Graves Are Walking.  John Kelly.  Macmillan/London. 2012.

The Hit Parade #6: Pete Volkous

It’s hard to avoid the obvious when compiling any sort of greatest hits list.  There are ceramic items, and ceramic artists, who would be obvious choices for almost any pottery list.  One such artist would (should) be Pete Volkous and his famous forays into ceramic Abstract Expressionism.

To be sure he didn’t work in a vacuum.  Many other ceramic artists of his generation also defined the course of contemporary ceramics (Garth Clark’s Ceramics in America, 2014 list only grudgingly acknowledges Volkous.)

Pete Volkous appears here for another reason.  His touch was incredible, but what really hit home was how crazy he was.  He was a real bohemian pottery Rock Star – in the most “Rock Star” meaning of that term.  Pete was like a singular personification of the Beatles, leading an invasion into a world of ceramic Elvis Presley’s. 

A generation of pottery students were ga ga about him.  He showed us that not only was it possible to do whatever you wanted – the mold was shattered – but you could have a blast doing it.  This was a potent brew for any young, aspiring, and barely responsible art student back in the day…

And like the Beatles, way too much has been written and said about Pete Volkous, to the point that summoning his name has almost become a cliché.  That hardly matters, of course.  After Pete, the cat was out of the bag.