At the very end of last year, when discussing with my friend, Jade Sims, what I was planning to do for my Subject, she looked up in surprise. As it turns out, she was planning to do much the same, but as a Maker, she was planning to create a range of ceramics to be used in kitchens as storage and cookware.
It seemed natural therefore, that we collaborate, especially as Jade does not often cross over into the drawing and painting that pepper my work, and I have little or no experience in the very visceral processes that Jade uses in the everyday.
We talked about how we would want our range to look, and focussed on long clean storage containers with wooden lids, and illustrations applied as decals to the outside of the vessels. For both of us, this is not our final major project, but something that compliments our professional practise and a tester to see how we work as partners. Plaster and wood turning would be the main process used for this project, while we experimented with applying decals to ceramics. Obviously, the theme of food compliments the kitchenware, and we felt that kitchenware is best represented by the activities that take place within the heart of the home, the place where all the food is made.
We agreed that although we should both know about each others’ processes, that we shouldn’t dabble too much in each others- third year was going to be busy enough without learning a whole new skillset as well. During the summer Jade read into ceramic printing techniques while I started drawing out rough sketches and looking at printing decals online, something that appealed to both of us as a way of creating the work.
Having taken some market research, we began to compare other ranges and designs that were in a similar vein to the ideas that we had. After several trips around Cardiff city centre, we began to identify other cannisters and jars that had characteristics that we liked or thought would make decorative or practical additions to our designs.
Jade began experimenting with the range and function of the plaster moulds she could create in order to give us the best idea of how all these cannisters might look and stand up to the strains of everyday living. Some of these were random forms, just to get a feel for a proportion of a functional vessel, and others were taken from sketches. After several months without making some moulds, some were successful and others weren’t, so it took several attempts to get the correct shapes that she was looking for.
We agreed that the pots should range in function and size so as best to create a variety, and also to show Jade’s skill as a ceramicist. As such, we came up with a few small ideas of the kinds of products that we would like to create. These included an egg dish, some small spice jars, a large spaghetti jar and a complimenting smaller pasta jar. We also played around with the idea of having a tea and coffee cannister that would match a sugar cannister, though these have never come to fruition.
I created several designs, that started up as terribly rough drafts and scaled up to the final designs. I created them with just straight pen and ink studies of some small designs and then scanned them into PhotoShop in order to get the lines to thicken and clean up stray lines and flickers.
The small motifs are meant to reflect a clean, graphic representation of some of the foodstuffs that might be included in the jars, and are intended to circle the outside of the jars. I created, for example a long line of penne pasta stacked one on top of each other as the decoration for the side of the pasta jar, and long lines of spaghetti for the side of the spaghetti jar. These I felt were minimalist, but also added a point of interest to the outside of what could be a very boring piece of kitchen equipment.
Originally, the majority of these designs were intended to be seen only in black and white, but gradually hints of colour came through in the edits, as we thought they added a better depth of interest to each of the designs. I am very happy with them, and I like the very small details that reflect the range and variety of food that one might find in the same habitat as the jars that we are creating.
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