It seems to be pretty universally acknowledged that the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum has an excellent shop which at this time of year encompasses everything from stocking fillers to jewellery costing around £2,000. If, during your retail mission you suddenly remember you are in a museum I’d recommend a visit to the ceramics gallery that occupies the top floor and seems to float above the city and the shopping frenzy below. Light filters in from roof windows and even on a grey day some of the glazed pots look like iridescent bubbles suspended in mid-air.
I see I’ve mentioned the pot word already and while I appreciate the frustration of some ceramicists at being seen as the pot people it is the beauty and utility of vessels – vases, urns, jugs etc that initially drew me to ceramics. Huge as it is the V&A collection has plenty for non-pot people too, from tiny figurines to a colossal tile-covered stove which reminded me of a character from a nineteenth century Russian novel. Chronologically the exhibits start from around 5,000BC and run right through to the work of contemporary ceramicists.
As good a place to start as any is at the exhibition’s navel, that is the circular dome section which splits the linear gallery into two. This is given over to Material Forces, a collection of work commissioned to mark the opening of the ceramics gallery in September this year. The signature installation is Signs and Wonders by Edmund de Waal, a flock of all-white vessels that he sees as ‘shadows’ or ‘essences’ of the pieces in the V&A collection that have particularly inspired him. All these ghostly vessels are displayed on a circular shelf, just below the dome’s cornice. It’s impossible to see the whole exhibit at once, you have to content yourself with fragments, rather like glimpsing the outline of a city on the horizon on a snowy day.
For dedicated pot-gazers this gallery offers a whole lifetime of leisure opportunity. On this visit I spent a long time contemplating a water sprinkler made in twelfth century Korea. With its pale green glaze and black inlaid decoration of ducks and a willow tree its charm is only accentuated by the fact that the spout on its long neck looks ever so slightly wonky. It was used to scatter water during Buddhist temple services and made me think of a friend’s interesting theory that we ceased to treasure water when we began to carry it in utilitarian, mass-produced containers. Actually I think we began to treat water in a more cavalier fashion in places like Britain when people (women) stopped having to lug it home from ponds and wells.
In the midst of all this beauty it’s sad that ceramics degree courses in Britain seem to be disappearing. Glasgow School of Art and Camberwell College of Art are no longer accepting new students and the University of Westminster is closing its renowned Harrow Ceramics department where Edmund de Waal, creator of Signs and Wonders, studied.
Access to the V&A ceramics collection is free and there is more to come when the final section of the new gallery opens in summer 2010.
Photo of ceramic glazes by Djinn76
