Saturday 29 August 2015
Sketching Ceramics at the V&A
I thought I knew the V&A pretty well having been a regular visitor since the 1980's when I was at university just round the corner. But I haven't been up to the ceramics on the 6th floor before which was the destination for Sketching Tuesday earlier this week. With excellent light , sketching stools readily available and a vast collection, it was a fantastic if overwhelming choice. So many shapes, textures and colours, where to start? I spent almost an hour wandering around, gazing into cabinets.
My preference is for early, relatively plain wares : when I did pottery evening classes in Shepherds Bush years ago with Marta Donaghey, my inspiration was prehistoric/ Neolithic pottery and I made masses of thumb pots incised with different marks. When I go on holiday I'm actually really interested in seeing all those broken bit of pots in dusty museums!
I loved all the examples of oil lamps ( above) it looks like the curators had fun arranging them - all similar shapes yet unique , handmade.
The colours of the stacks of bowls in the Middle Eastern section with their lovely glazes and the subtlety of the Korean? dishes really appealed but as I only had graphite and ink as drawing media I sought out some interesting shaped vessels to draw
Some of these early Chinese ceramics caught my eye
In the end I settled for this pert Chinese ewer with 3 feet from about 2500BC - made from the same clay as porcelain but before the high temperature kilns had been invented , it remained as porous earthenware ( but more resistant to heat than other clays) . This and it's distinctive shape suggests it was placed over a fire for boiling water. I'd intended to draw it with the amazing coiled structure behind but ran out of time.
From my viewpoint I could only see 2 of it's feet ( with the shadow of the third in the glass) and found it far more difficult to draw than I'd anticipated . Huge amounts of rubbing out and correcting were involved - get one part right and then another would be incorrect ! Over coffee and custard tart later , I was trying to explain to the others the frustration of capturing something that is irregular and imperfect - between eyes and pencil , your mind tries to correct it, drawing what you think ought to be there rather than what you actually observe. I was pleased with the handle though!
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1 comment:
Elegant ceramics and an elegant sketch. Thanks for sharing these, Mags.
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