thu 28/03/2024

Ceramics Galleries, V&A | reviews, news & interviews

Ceramics Galleries, V&A

Ceramics Galleries, V&A

Ceramics are basically the Liberal Democrats of the fine and decorative arts – often oddly shaped, eccentric, with a yearning to be useful – but with the V&A’s new Ceramics Galleries, the impossible seems achievable. They might actually win you over, rendering mute the brash bully boys of contemporary art and the vulgar spin of Postmodern design.

robin_dayThe setting helps – elegant suites of tall rooms high up on the sixth floor of the Museum (itself, a kind of Maharajah’s Palace as seen from Cromwell Road) – but the collection is truly stupendous, arguably the best in the world. Before, the collection was held under arrest in sad old cabinets, but being the quietest galleries in the whole museum they were perfect foil for pick-ups played out all afternoon.

Now, this would be impossible (or at least the rules would be changed), since there’s a brisk air to these 11 galleries, with their taut lines, occasionally exquisite detailing, pleasing graphics and, most significantly, the sense of a creative medium that is finally getting its due. The sheer joy of working clay – moulding, shaping, pressing, cutting, dipping, marking – permeates one gallery, devoted to production, with a mock-up of Dame Lucie Rie’s studio to one side. You only have to look at her work to see how ceramics can, in the hands of a master, possess such utter wholeness as an art form.

Something of this inner calm, an attentive quality combined with utter lack of pretentiousness, was evident in the elderly group of artist potters I watched in the galleries as they moved with delight from one exhibit to another, as if greeting old friends. Their approval speaks volumes. These new galleries, designed by Stanton Williams Architects, represent Phase 1 of an £11 million project, displaying 3,000 objects ranging in date from 2,500 BC to the present day. Those galleries organised according to theme – ceramics made in the studio, the factory, for architectural uses, production techniques – work well, with enough but not too much information on hand.

French VaseThere is a glorious moment in one spectacular domed gallery with a balustraded overview into the Museum’s hallway far below: large ceramic sculptures – they really deserve the name – occupy the space with the confidence of gods in a pantheon. Edmund de Waal’s site-specific commission Signs and Wonders, involving several hundred pots and dishes of different shapes and muted shades, line the interior rim of the domed ceiling. Difficult to read, yes, being so high up but deliciously evocative in the way they act as a kind of retinal photo-album recalling the myriad shapes and personalities of the ceramics in the collection.

One of the largest galleries, given over to a fairly dense chronological massing of objects, is less satisfying simply because you feel this should be set earlier in the proceedings. The refurbishment isn’t completed - Phase 2, due to open in 2010, is being designed by Dutch design firm Opera, and will house a further 26,000 objects aimed at the scholarly user. This only partly excuses the absence of a cogent, accessible introduction to a medium that everyone has a view on, even if they don’t recognise it.

PicassoVaseOddly, it is only in this redisplay that I took in quite how the studio potters of the mid-20th century – Michael Cardew, Colin Pearson, Bernard Leach, Hans Coper and others - met its early technological promise and fully realised horror by voiding the future, returning instead to the past, such as 17th-century English Toft Ware or pre-Classical Greece, or anywhere else but urbanised Europe (Nigeria, Japan, the wilds of the West Country). Ceramics can be about a return to the earth, some primordial home. But then you only have to glimpse a piece of ravishing Sevres porcelain (plenty here) to rediscover your inner bitch.

Don’t miss the short film of Jim Melchert – a Californian inspirer of the Clay Movement (don’t ask, but expect beards) – dipping his entire head, along with his colleagues, into a vat of clay slip, and sitting still for an hour. This is 1972, and ceramics made into Conceptual Art. It’s silly and sweet and bursting with integrity. Just like a Lib Dem conference, really.

illustrated from top: Robin Day, 2006, Hans Sofer, © V&A Images; French Vase, c. 1890 – 1892 © V&A; Vase painted by Pablo Picasso © V&A

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