Photo By Gail
Florencio Lennox Campello is a prolific American artist, critic and blogger. I’ve noticed his work at the NY edition of the Affordable Art Fair since it returned post-Covid, where he exhibits unique monochromatic works painted on shards of pottery. At the most recent fair, held in September, I was completely charmed by this fun depiction of President Barack Obama as “the Batman.” I’m sure it sold right away.
Photos By Gail
David Bielander is an award-winning jewelry designer who translates simple, everyday objects into exceptional pieces of art. Here, he has transformed a set of baby pink ceramic plates and bowls into the petals of a stunning Pink Rose Sculpture, which I spotted at the 2021 Salon Art + Design!
Here’s what the full sculpture looks like alongside two similar rose plate sculptures. So gorgeous!
Photographed in the Booth for Ornamentum Gallery, which is Located in Hudson, NY.
All Photos By Gail
Patti Warashina’s Kilns series subversively undermined the macho “cult of the kiln:” a phrase used to coin the sexist culture that surrounded kiln-building during the mid-twentieth century. As a ceramics student at the University of Washington, Warashina observed that kiln-building lessons were directed towards men, while surface decoration was the jurisdiction of women. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Patti Warashina, Gold Finger
All Photos By Gail
Each day in NYC there is something to newly discover, no matter how long it’s been there. I am rarely on the block of East 3rd Street between Avenues A and B, but I had occasion to walk that block during this past Sunday’s lovely snow storm. Because I always have an eye peeled for things that might be fun for the blog, I made the charming discovery that most of the buildings on the north side of the block (because that is the side I was on) have these cute and colorful ceramic tile mosaics on their facades, mostly around the doorways and near the steps.
Continue reading Ceramic Mosaics on East 3rd Street
Photos By Gail
How did an ancient Asian tradition become something quintessentially British? The fashion for Tea drinking in Great Britain started at court in the later seventeenth century and spread among the aristocracy. Tea remained a heavily taxed luxury until a century later, 1n 1784, when tea duties were slashed from 119 to 12.5 percent, making it affordable to the general public.
In the eighteenth century, the rise of the East India Company — founded to trade with India, Southeast Asia, and China — led to a British monopoly on tea distribution. This global grip established the nation’s mercantile empire, critically dependent on colonial occupation and the movement of slaves. In 1771, American colonists famously protested Britain’s commercial control, dumping imported tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party.
Ambitious British pottery manufacturers and retailers leveraged tea’s popularity to their advantage, cultivating an enormous national ceramics industry. Vastly expanded production yielded new wares, materials and consumers. Profit margins on ceramics were slim, so quality mattered, as did efficiency. Resources and skills were often shared, as innovative makers sprung up and sometimes quickly failed. These developments signaled a shift — creative and economic — toward mass manufacture in a remarkably nimble market, generating a booming export industry for Britain as a result
Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.