Dimensions: Ø 10cm x H 8.5cm
Materials: Stoneware
Method: Hand thrown stoneware vessel, rake fired to 1000 degrees in a gas kiln. When the interior glaze has melted its removed from the kiln whilst red hot.
Care: Not Water-tight, dust lightly
Description:
This finely hand-thrown vessel, with its masterfully weighted and balanced form, exhibits strong gestural mark-making. A unique piece in the collection, here the artist conjures horse hair as a paint brush to create an authentic feeling of movement; poetically mimicking wisps of smoke present within the raku firing process, and in this way visually speaking of its material history. The gestural exterior is contrasted to the intricate web of white crackled glaze amalgamated on the interior, drawing the eye. Intentionally torn, the softly collapsed rim further reflects the artist’s statement of material resilience. The base displays the raw, rough clay body of its material beginnings, finished with a neat maker's mark.
Jennifer Morris’ 2022 collection for Maud & Mabel entitled Resilience responds to the artist’s sustained meditation on the importance of strength and durability to navigate daily life. Exploring her material through this concept of resilience, Morris utilises both raku firing, in which clays have to withstand rapid changes in extreme temperature, alongside reduction firing, in which clay has to endure the expansion and contraction of snowflake glazes: two material processes which put the clay under significant stress. Her preference for these processes, which produce intricate surface crackling and strong textural depth, lies in Morris’ relishing of chance-based interactions that are so intrinsic to the ceramic practice - ‘You can never make the same exact piece twice and therein lies the magic.’
Jennifer Morris is a ceramic artist based close to the Maud & Mabel Gallery in Hampstead, London. A pre-foundation course in 2008 introduced her to working with clay. Morris hand-builds objects that can be easily inserted into daily life and provide both joy and function. Using an understated and limited colour palette, which draws attention to the silhouettes of her creations, Morris experiments with different stoneware and earthenware clays. Her creative process is intuitive; visualising an image in her mind and then creating it in three-dimensional form - ‘I sketch in clay, making new ideas come to life’. For Morris, this allows her to find inspiration during the process, letting her works organically develop, retaining energy and movement in her pieces.
