Patching Pottery
Reforming so-called "waste" from two studios
A couple of months back, we adopted two full buckets of pottery “waste” from a local studio. We can’t be more thankful for our friends Dora and her husband who decided for that day to be their gym day. By some miracle, they managed to lift these buckets, initially full of clay, into their car boot and brought them over to us.
These chunks of clay were so dense, particularly the purplish-brown ones, that we had to use a hammer and a metal file to break them into smaller pieces. The white cores were much softer and had a powdery texture that rubbed off easily - perhaps they were kaolin clay?
We heard from them that sometimes, people sign up for pottery classes just to enjoy the experience of making pottery. For whatever reason, they may not want to bring their creations home. This became a problem for the studio because these pieces started to pile up, and they would have disposed them off otherwise.
We were surprised to find that many of these abandoned pieces were very well-formed and beautifully made. Most pieces were of a soft pastel pink, and others of lighter hues of beiges and whites. We ended up adopting them and while admiring our little collection, found the initials of their makers inscribed at the bottom of these pieces.
There were also quite a few tiny broken pieces that initially we did not know what to do with.
An inspiration came from seeing how participants from the “Rice as Binders” community art programme we did earlier this year were able to pinch paper mache into many versatile forms. This year, we both felt like wanting to make more sculptural pieces, and since we have no lack of used paper to blend into paper mache in our studio, Shirin had the idea to try combining some of the curved pieces into something else.
A few of the medium-sized flat pieces, when laid out together kind of gave me (Liz) the idea for them to be patched into a leaf-shaped platter -
The process of making these reminded us of patchworking. The broken pieces placed together initially did not feel congruent, with awkward angles, rigged edges and rims that don’t quite align. But the mouldability of blended paper fibres enabled some form to be built stably. Not only as a sticky glue for the pottery pieces, but also helping to form the body of each object.
This exploration with discarded pottery and paper from two different studios was part of our display at the Singapore Science Park, as part of the annual design week in Singapore.
This was an interesting way to work with pottery pieces and paper that we would otherwise have discarded.
Hope to be able to share more about the other pieces we made in the future!
Upcoming:
We are not having any public activations for the coming month of October, and instead will be putting in more time to work on some new projects and ideas we have put on the backburner for a bit longer than we would have liked… ;)
We will be hosting some in-studio sessions towards the end of the year to wrap up this crazy year. We cannot believe it is already almost October!! What is going on…
Till next letter,
Liz and Shirin