A Passion for China E-Book

Molly Hatch

• Herausgeber: September Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

A Passion for China is a personal celebration of the everyday beauty of tableware. 'As we move through our daily lives, eating breakfast, sipping an afternoon cup of tea or gathering for a family dinner, the patterned ceramic objects we live with are precious witnesses to our stories. We eat from them, they warm our hands after a cold walk outdoors and we pull them out to celebrate the births, marriages and lives of our loved ones.' Acclaimed ceramicist, artist and designer Molly Hatch explores the family stories behind beloved items - the bowls and cups we have inherited or chosen with love and care - and brings the history of porcelain, potteries and patterns to life through her stunning, hand-drawn illustrations. A tribute to the rich heritage of the vintage plates, jugs and pots that make our homes our own. Please note this is a fixed-format ebook with colour images and may not be well-suited for older e-readers.

Leseprobe

A PASSION FOR CHINA

A PASSION FOR CHINA

Let me sit here for everwith bare things,this coffee cup,this knife, this fork,things in themselves,myself being myself.—Virginia WoolfThe Waves

Introduction 11

Chapter 1

Grandmother’s House 15

Chapter 2

What I Learned at the Museum 59

Chapter 3

In the Studio 107

Chapter 4

Popular Patterns 137

Acknowledgements 171

Photo credits 173

About the author 175

For my daughter Camilla

INTRODUCTION

As we move through our daily lives, casually eating breakfast,sipping a leisurely afternoon cup of tea or gathering fora family dinner, the patterned ceramic objects we live withare precious witnesses to our stories. We eat from them, theywarm our hands after a cold walk outdoors, we pull them outto celebrate the births, marriages and lives of our loved ones,we sometimes drop them carelessly or smash them in anger,and then we work to delicately glue them back together.Their familiarity becomes a part of our sense of ourselves,a sense of our home.

This book began because I wanted to revisit and learnmore about the china I loved in my childhood. Where did thepieces come from? Who had them before my grandmother?What provenance has been lost that I could regain? If theseobjects could talk, what stories would they tell?

Looking at the family china, full of memory and meaningto me personally, drove me back to the museums whereI first studied. As a young artist, I had relished these beautifulobjects in museums, and had studied them within their walls,but I realized I needed to step back and research more inorder to truly appreciate what ceramics have meant in humanhistory. Only then could I appreciate the china from my ownfamily history.

The story of how porcelain travelled from East to Westis a fabulous one. The museums gave me tales of Queensand Kings, world travellers and explorers and even indenturedservitude, and ultimately an understanding behind ourcollective love of porcelain.

Introduction 11

Museums are the keepers of our larger histories. Theyrecord provenance, keep strangers’ stories and select theobjects worthy of study. In creating this book I was remindedthat one is never too experienced to learn or too professionalto be surprised by the past and how it can inform our present.

Tracing my role as a maker and designer in the lineageof studio potters in the Arts and Crafts movement gave mea chance to illustrate some of the most beautiful, formativestudio pottery of the twentieth century.

But, in the end, the journey this book took me on wascircular. In the last chapter we return to childhood; to thepopular ceramics that inhabit our memories, that laid downan appreciation of colour and pattern in so many of us, andwhich are still used today.

From the clarity of blue and white to the tangled charmof floral patterns it was here that our passions for porcelainbegan. A passion that brings joy, but also explorationand knowledge. A never-ending relationship betweenthe handmade, their makers and their holders; the past,the present and the future.

12 Molly Hatch      A Passion for China

Grandmother’sHouse

THE THINGSTHAT SHAPED ME

My early childhood was spent on an organic dairy farm inVermont. My parents were back-to-the-land hippies, followinga sustenance living model for the majority of my youth.It was a pretty simple childhood — lots of days spent outside,working in the vegetable garden, hauling buckets of water tothe animals, feeding baby calves from a bottle, making hayover long hot summers. For the most part, nature and animalswere my playmates, the river across the street providedendless hours of entertainment for me and my brother. Life onthe farm was largely about being outside. There were many

days hauling and stacking square haybales onto the back of my father’sChevy truck with the promise of aride on top of the stack from the fieldto the hay barn, plus the reward ofa cold root beer soda from ‘the store’at the end of the day (a rare treatin our house — there was only onegeneral store to purchase food fromin our tiny town). There were daysweeding in the gardens and even moredays harvesting food. I remember onesummer in particular when I convincedmy parents to grow shell peas bypromising to personally shell all thepeas myself so that I could havethem to eat all winter (they were myfavourite vegetable and too expensiveto buy from the shop).

16 Molly Hatch      A Passion for China