Paul Scott
Artist/MIRIAD Phd fellowship
Manchester Inst. for Reseach and Innovation in Art and design, Manchester Metropolitan University
Ceramics, Landscape, Memory and Confection
The development of landscape on ceramic surfaces, from a support to narration, to a genre in its own right will be examined in the context of wider developments in the visual arts. The research will show how a combination of landscape imagery, pattern and ceramic form became a significant carrier of meaning following the industrialisation of production; and how although altered, these still have a hold in contemporary memory. Studio research will manipulate established vocabularies of printed motif and pattern together with contemporary imagery, to explore image extraction, re-composition and adaptation; establishing patterns and methodologies of remediation in the confection of stylised printed landscape patterns on ceramic. Creating contemporary confections, which draw on collective memory of the familiar (blue and white), the research will engage with elements of existent landscape composition and construction.
Research Aims:
- To establish how landscape patterns and the picturesque informed the decorative language of industrially produced ceramics, and the extent to which these were particular to the medium.
- To create an understanding of the relationship between these ceramic patterns and iconographies, and the treatment of landscape in other areas of the visual arts (in particular painting and textiles).
- To establish processes involved in their formulation and remediation to the ceramic surface
- To generate insights and understandings of issues affecting the existent contemporary landscape by creating formulated ceramic patterns and the ‘picturesque’, drawing on collective memory of the genre.
Research Context:
It is only relatively recently that critical writing in the applied and decorative arts has begun to examine the decorative surface history of ceramics and its meanings; my ongoing research into the graphic development of ceramic surface [1] has been acknowledged as adding significantly to the body of knowledge in this area.
In recent years I have engaged in research of (ceramic) print archives in UK and Sweden [2] and curatorial and studio based research of objects in particular museum collections [3]. As well as developing an understanding of the genre of Blue and White ceramics, I have been harvesting raw material for creative engagement. My practice-based work employing print and ceramic surfaces, alludes to the industrial, and uses a similar, familiar visual language and vocabulary, to successfully engage with contemporary issues affecting the landscape [4]. Current studio research involves the deconstruction of printed image (archival and contemporary) in a reversal of ontological understanding; translating perspectival codes into printed ceramic planes – actual forms occupying real space, whilst embodying the rhetoric of a deceptive pictorial system. Producing new works for placement in differing locations is planned, creating new challenges, including those of scale, and material suitability. Conceptually, work examines the duality of the ceramic medium; form as image, image as form. Porcelain and bone china, as materially extricated from the earth by a combination of mineral extraction (china clay), and farmed animal product (Ox bone); the landscape as fantasy or pastoral decoration, as producer of food, source of energy and consumer products, and as an escape from urban living.
Methodology:
Analysis of selected published texts on landscape (from a variety of perspectives) and patterned ceramics.
Observational research will reference selected collections of ceramics and prints [5].
Prints taken from the unique, extant Rörstrand copper plate archive will be employed in analytical practice based work; Drawing, engraving and digital manipulation will be employed, to establish how aesthetic, practical and material factors influence the stylisation of landscapes in their evolution to decorative patterns for the ceramic surface.
Interviews with engravers and digital artists at Spode will establish how they continue to translate imagery into new commercial designs.
Studio research will also establish methodologies for large-scale printing and ceramic form production, with suitable slip and glaze surfaces for printed detail.
Outputs:
Papers will be published in appropriate journals and presented to conferences, including NCECA 2006. A number of documented exhibitions together with complimentary writing will make up the final submission.
Selected Bibliography:
- Andrews, Malcolm, Landscape and Western Art, OxfordUniversity Press, 1999
- Atkinson, Conrad Picturing the System , PUB Pluto Press and ICALondon 1981.
- Barrell, John. The Dark Side of Landscape: The rural Poor in English Painting, 1730-1840. Cambridge, 1980
- Birmingham, Ann. Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860. Berkeley: U. of California P. 1986
- Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
- Brennan, Matthew C Wordsworth, Turner and Romantic Landscape: a Study of the Traditions of the Picturesque and SublimeCamden House 1987.
- Copeland, Robert Spode’s Willow Pattern and other designs after the Chinese, Studio Vista, 1990.
- Coysh and Henrywood, The Dictionary of Blue and White Pottery, 1780-1880, Vols 1&2, Antique Collectors Club 1982/1989
- Gilpin, William Three Essays (1792)
- Harrison, Robert Pogue. Forrests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago: U. of Chicago P. 1992
- Mitchell, W. J. T., editor. Landscape and Power. Chicago: U. of Chicago P. 1994
- Rosen Charles/Zerner Henri, Romanticism and Realism Faber and Faber 1987
- Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory Fontana Press, 1995
- Tichelaar Jan, Hans Pieter & Polder, Casper, Fired Paintings, Freisian Ceramic Wall plaques 1870-1930, Primervera Pers, Netherlands 1998.
- Turner, James, The politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry 1630-1660. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979.
- Warnke, Martin. Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. 1994.
- Williams Raymond, Country and City in the ModernNovelUniversity of Wales, Swansea, 1987.
