ON VIEW | 2024
Featured Exhibitions
- OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?
group exhibition
FEB 20 – APR 21, 2024
at The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA - Rivers Flow/Artists Connect
group exhibition
FEB 2 – SEP 1, 2024
at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY - CLAYSCAPES
group exhibition
APR 13 – OCT 20, 2024
at the Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY - 50 Years in the Making – Alumni Exhibition
group exhibition
JUN 13th – SEP 1st, 2024
at The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA
HIGHLIGHTED ARTWORKS
American Cities & Landscapes
Energy & Environment
- Posy Vases
Race, Indigeneity & Immigration
Samplers & Souvenirs
*Learn about each Series below.
Paul Scott has produced multiple series, including his recently touring New American Scenery Series, in which many of the developing bodies of work are included.
Please check back regularly as we are correlating the artist’s statements with developing displays and informational pdfs.
As always, please inquire or contact us for more details or lists of available artworks.
Featured Series & Artworks:
Energy & Environment
Across the Borderline
Series of platters depicting the border between the US and Mexico using imagery culled from the Wedgwood archive and popular media to address the theme of immigration.
Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Trumpian Campaigne, Legacy No:1, (Across the Borderline, Portland, Black Lives Matter)”, 2021, in-glaze decal collage on pearlware platter (after Enoch Wood), 15.4 x 12.2 x 2″, 39 x 30.5 x 5cm.
Paul Scott, Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Across the Borderline (4) (Trumpian Campaigne), 2020
The Angola 3
souvenir plate drawing reference to inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary who were held in solitary confinement for the longest period in American history. It is suspected that this unethical treatment was retaliation for the inmates’ connection to the Black Panther Party.
Paul Scott, “Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Angola 3″ 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 11 x 11 x 1”.
Paul Scott, “Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, The Angola 3″ back, 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 11x 11 x 1”
Albany (Souvenirs & Views of New York)
souvenir plate of an urban landscape viewed through a roadside screen of trees and brush.
Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, “View of Albany”, 2019, In-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 11 x 11 x 1″, 28 cm dia.
Paul Scott, “Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Near the Oxbow (after Thomas Cole)”, 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal), on shell-edged pearlware platter c.1850, 13.5 x 16.75 x 2″.
Fleur.de.Sel’s New York
series of souvenir plates depicting New York City streetscapes drawn from the Instagram account @Fleur.de.Sel that appear timeless, illustrating the small businesses and cultural diversity that are increasingly at risk with the city’s dangerously inflated wealth gap.
“New American Scenery, New York and Transferwares”
In the early part of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of printed blue and white tablewares from England were exported to North America. Scenes of the newly independent United States were used in a myriad of designs and were characterized by a deep blue semiotic. Alongside printed wallpapers and textiles these transferwares formed part of the new media of their day. Pictorial in nature, their vitrified designs remediated prints from book or magazine illustration, melding them with floral and botanical borders. By the end of the century, they became highly collectible and the subject of a number of books, including RT Haines Halsey’s classic ‘New York on Dark Blue Staffordshire Pottery’. Published in 1899, the limited edition tome plotted the history of the genre, illustrated by sumptuous photogravures in blue depicting a comprehensive range of pictorial transferwares. 120 years later, in my New American Scenery series of artworks I updates some of these early subject matters of New York using 21st century alternatives.
Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, “Fleurs.de.sel’s New York”, 2019, (set of twelve plates), In-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze., 11 x 11 x 1″, 11″ or 28 cm diameter (each plate)
Stop, Keat’s & Palm Too… 511 Too… Chicken Place…Mexicana… Laundry Project 23, ChelseaHypermarket, Chelsea Square… Canal Street…. Stairs 361… Hot Dogs…. Village Pizza… Pizza Park… Ray’s Pizza, Jakes Saloon, Meatballs.
California Wildfires
souvenir plate addresses ecological precarity by referencing the most severe wildfire season in California’s history that occurred in 2020.
Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, California Wildfires No:1″, 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on partially erased ‘Beauty Spots of California’, Staffordshire souvenir transferware plate, 9.75 x 9.75 x 1.25”.
Back of Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, California Wildfires No:1″, 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on partially erased ‘Beauty Spots of California’, Staffordshire souvenir transferware plate, 9.75 x 9.75 x 1.25”.
“Cup Plates”
In the early part of the nineteenth century, transfer printed blue and white tablewares from Staffordshire were exported to North America in their tens of thousands. Pictorial in nature, their vitrified designs remediated print from book or magazine illustration, melding with floral and botanical borders. Scenes of the newly independent United States formed a significant part of this material. These transferwares included ‘Cup Plates’, tiny coasters used to protect furniture from marks whilst the diner drank coffee or tea from the cup’s accompanying saucer. Measuring between 9 to 11 cm (3.5 to 4 inches) across, the plates are characterised by deep cobalt blue prints melted into a pearlware glaze. Images and patterns were sometimes specifically designed and made for the small form, others (above) were collaged from tissue print details of larger patterns. Because of their small scale, flaws in the prints or their application are more obvious than on larger wares and they have their own aesthetic.
Cumbrian Blue(s), Indian Point cup plate, 4/50. Transferware print on pearlware cup plate, 104mm. dia. Collaborative work with Paul Holdway (former head of engraving at Spode). Tissue print transfer taken from a copper plate engraved by Paul Holdway, Paul Scott 2021.
Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Indian Point (detail)
“New American Cites, Flint, Belle Island & The Ghost Gardens of Detroit”
I grew up in Birmingham, Britain’s ‘Motor City’, where the local economy relied on car manufacturers…. Austin, Morris (later British Leyland), Mini, Rover and all the associated motor suppliers. As a student in the early 1970’s, holiday working included ‘industrial cleaning’ in the huge Austin works in Longbridge… then two summers were spent in an engineering factory in Balsall Heath, assembling brake pipe adjuster clamps (amongst other things). When car production eventually ceased in the city, unemployment, and the impoverishment of communities swiftly followed. I clearly recall the dereliction, then later demolition of huge industrial sites, and the yawing empty spaces. A few years later, similar scenes also became familiar to me in the Staffordshire pottery towns as the British ceramics industry all but collapsed. I was thus well aware, from first hand experience, of the effects of deindustrialisation on urban environments and communities. A series of early Cumbrian Blue(s) artworks reflected the ruin and decay of my home town in prints and tiled panels…
Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Detroit Ghost Gardens No:2″, 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 12 x 12 x 1.25”, 30.48 x 30.48 x 3.18cm.
Paul Scott, “Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Belle Island Bridge, Detroit” 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 11 x 11 x 1″.
Pattern Samplers
Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Pattern Sampler No:4 (Adams)”, 2019, in-glaze decal collage on shell-edge, pearlware platter c.1820, 10 x 13 x 1.5″.
Paul Scott, “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Pattern Sampler No:1″, 2019, in-glaze screenprint (decal) on pearlware shell-edged platter c.1820, 11.75 x 14.75 x 1.5”
Posy Vases
Cumbrian Blue(s) New American Scenery, Set of five posy vases. Comprising, Fleurs de Sel’s New York Canal Street & Village Pizza, Souvenir of Portland (Black Lives Matter) & Selma, Broken Treaties & Leonard Peltier, No Human Being is Illegal & Across the Borderline San Antonio, Fracked & California Wildfires. Each vase 165mm x 125mm x 85mm. Paul Scott 2022.
ABOUT
English, b. 1953, Darley Dale, Derbyshire, England
lives and works in Cumbria, UK
Paul Scott is a Cumbrian-based artist with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft and design, he is well known for research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue and white artworks in glazed ceramic.
Scott’s artworks can be found in public collections around the globe – including The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Norway, the Victoria and Albert Museum London, National Museums Liverpool, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and Brooklyn Art Museum USA. Commissioned work can be found in a number of UK museums as well as public places in the North of England, including Carlisle, Maryport, Gateshead and Newcastle Upon Tyne. He has also completed large-scale works in Hanoi, Vietnam and Guldagergård public sculpture park in Denmark.
A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing and commissioned work ensures that his work is continually developing. It is fundamentally concerned with the re-animation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern and a sense of place. He was Professor of Ceramics at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) from 2011–2018. Scott received his Bachelors of Art Education and Design at Saint Martin’s College and Ph.d at the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design in Manchester, England.
His current research project New American Scenery has been enabled by an Alturas Foundation artist award, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England. More on New American Scenery, here.
Paul Scott is represented by Ferrin Contemporary in the USA and The Scottish Gallery in Scotland.
ON HIS WORK
Paul Scott, a material-based conceptual artist, creates ceramic work that blurs the boundaries between art, craft, and design. With a penchant for rescuing cast-offs, he restores them to a new life by using them as a canvas for biting social commentary. His work tells stories that explore the unexpected movement of images through materials, media, cultures, politics, histories, and geographies, inviting us to see these objects in a new way.
Scott is an authority on printed vitreous surfaces. His research, artwork, and book, Ceramics in Print, has been instrumental in the phenomenal growth of printmaking techniques in contemporary ceramics.
Scott’s latest book, Horizon: Transferware and Contemporary Ceramics, co-edited with Knut Astrup Bull, explores the complex journey of ideas and images to their realization in blue and white, then multicoloured tablewares. Blending historical enquiry with contemporary practice, the book illustrates how artists re-appropriate this historical genre. Text and visual essays explore unexpected political and cultural themes, changing the way we view these familiar objects.
In the fall of 2013, Scott, a resident of the UK, traveled in the US, visiting museum collections of transferware and participating in artist residencies at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia and Project Art in Massachusetts. His series, American Scenery, presents a striking duality with current American imagery applied to antique china pieces that brings the past forward, exposes us to how we have shaped our landscape, and hints at what the future may hold.
Scott embarked on a new body of work in 2014 that involves the physical collaging of antique fragments using traditional ceramic conservation methods to join the elements. The mending, melding, and juxtaposition of the separate components creates completely new work, proving, again, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Scott’s work can be found in public and private collections around the globe. Ferrin Contemporary represents Scott in the US. His work can be viewed online at FerrinContemporary.com, at Project Art in Cummington, MA, and at various venues in the US.
NEW AMERICAN SCENERY
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View Series in Artwork Tab (left)
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View Full NAS Glossary PDF
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View NAS at Museums HERE
GUIDE
Paul Scott is a leading figure in the international field of ceramics and print. He is known for his manipulation of transfer-printed designs on factory-made domestic tablewares, which thus become vehicles for socio-political commentary. New American Scenery is permeated with his response to the ‘American’ transfer-printed tablewares that were produced in Staffordshire during the first part of the nineteenth century, exclusively for export to America. They have a common format of a central motif framed within an ornamental border and are decorated with imagery that celebrates the new republic. Scott’s New American Scenery work often maintains the same traditional format, while his surface imagery highlights a range of contemporary themes and issues. On the reverse of each piece can be found his maker’s mark, information about the printed edition to which it belongs and his signature; several pieces also offer substantial narrative accounts of the subjects depicted.
Paul Scott: New American Scenery, was made possible by an Artist In Residence grant from the Alturas Foundation, with additional support from Ferrin Contemporary, RISD Museum, Arts Council England, and Albany Institute of History & Art.
Paul Scott’s over-sized sampler jugs were inspired by historical transfer-printed jugs in museum collections. They were slip cast in Staffordshire using a mould that was developed from his drawings and photographs. Each is decorated with a selection of motifs – in the form of print decals from the New American Scenery series. He has described this jug as his most resolved example because it constitutes the most comprehensive sampling of border patterns and themes developed and explored throughout the whole series. The American Eagle motif that appears in several places was taken from the Spread Eagle motif used by the Staffordshire firm of Joseph Stubbs (active c1824–36).
There is a rationale for Scott’s treatment of every inch of surface. The first stage involves applying historical transfer-printed border designs as frames for selected imagery. He calls this ‘creating an architecture … I do the neck,’ he says, ‘I do the spout, I do the handle and then I create the spaces on the surface to infill with the graphic.’
Essay by Jo Dahn
Paul Scott, NAS Artwork Series Brochure, 2023, Pg 4
Paul Scott, NAS Artwork Series Brochure, 2023, Pg 1
Paul Scott, NAS Artwork Series Brochure, 2023, Pg 2
Paul Scott, NAS Artwork Series Brochure, 2023, Pg 3
SELECT SERIES STATEMENTS
In New American Scenery, Scott scrutinizes the American landscape from a contemporary perspective, one that grapples with issues of globalization, energy generation and consumption, capitalism, social justice, immigration, and the human impact on the environment. The images that Scott creates for his ceramics depict unsettling views of nuclear power plants, aging urban centers, abandoned industrial sites, wildfires, and isolating walls. As representations of the American landscape, they suggest a subversion of the picturesque aesthetic—the unpicturesque picturesque—and a new, disturbing norm.
“NAS” includes the following bodies of work, many of which were conceived on location and/or with insights from significant collaborators. Each title below represents a sub-series containing multiple iterations and/or designs: American Cities & Landscapes, Broken Treaties, Energy & Environment, Posy Vases, Race, Indigeneity & Immigration, Samplers, Sampler Jugs, Souvenirs, Views of New York.
Click the Artworks Tab on the left to learn more about each series.
“New American Scenery, Visitors to America”
The visitor, the stranger, the foreigner in a new land, encountering things that are both very familiar and yet disorienting….
I follow a tradition, a long line of visitors to America who’ve written about and depicted thecountry.
“New American Scenery, the Background….”
Transferware:
In the late 18th century, blue and white Staffordshire transferwares were developed to imitate painted Chinese export porcelains. By the early 19th century printed patterns had expanded to include images of the Grand Tour and of Empire. A particular dark blue version of the genre became popular in the United States, & from Liverpool, Staffordshire potters exported huge quantities of decorated wares depicting American subjects & landscape. Later that century these were to become highly collectible. … “.
“New American Scenery, Cape Coast Castle….”
This has a direct link to toppled Bristol statue of slave trader Edward Colston of the Royal African Company (1680 – 1692)… Its administration centre was Cape Coast Castle in current day Ghana. Commenting on the UK’s Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death on BBC Newsnight, Aliyah Hasinah explained how the UK has ‘had a longer time to marinate racism, to deeply entrench it through the use of scientific racism, eugenics, art, culture, business, politics, policies… In the same TV programme American actor Clark Peters talked about UK racism being ‘cloaked in beautiful language’.
Characterised by a dark blue palette of extraordinary depth & subtlety blue and white transferware was part of the ‘new media’ of its day… huge quantities of pictorial Staffordshire wares were exported to the US in early 19th century.… This platter is a perfect exemplar of the cloaking of racist history in ‘beautiful’ form… The original source of Enoch Wood’s transferware design was an engraving by John Hill (1806) after a painting by George Webster (1799), commissioned by HRH the Duke of Clarence as part of a campaign against abolitionists.. This platter was from a series of marine views made exclusively for US market.… In the original images both ships and castle flags were British, but Woods’ ‘slaver’ sails under Stars & Stripes.
NEW AMERICAN SCENERY IN THE US
Visit these museums in the US that have recently acquired work
from Scott’s American Scenery series.
Crocker Art Museum
Birmingham Museum of Art
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
RISD Museum
Boston MFA
Brooklyn Museum
Newark Museum
Carnegie Museum of Art
Mount Holyoke Art Museum
Chipstone Foundation
IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum:
(right) George Inness, American (1825-1894), “Saco Ford: Conway Meadows” 1876,
oil on canvas.
(center top) Homer Dodge Martin, American (1836-1897), “A Glimpse of Lake Placid,” 1887, oil on canvas.
(center bottom) Paul Scott, “Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), American Scenery, Hudson River, Indian Point No. 4, ” 2015, ceramic transfer decal.
(left) Albert Bierstadt, American (1830-1902), “Hetch Hetchy Canyon,” 1875, oil on canvas
ADDITIONAL US COLLECTIONS
Alturas Foundation, San Antonio, TX
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, WI
Copeland Borough Council Collection, Oregon College of Art and Craft Collection, Portland, OR
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Denison University, Granville, OH
Kohler Company, Kohler, WI
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA
New York Historical Society, New York, NY
Newark Art Museum, Newark, NJ
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA
RISD Museum, Providence, RI
Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
CONFECTED, BORROWED & BLUE, AN AMERICAN SAMPLER: TRANSFERWARE BY PAUL SCOTT
on view May 11 through October 20, 2024 | Solo Exhibition at the Shelburne Museum | Shelburne, VT
CURRENT + RECENT EXHIBITIONS
Ferrin Contemporary presents Paul Scott in “Our America/Whose America?”. Installation for NCECA Richmond, 2024 at the Wickham House at The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA. Image courtesy of The Valentine Museum.
OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?
2024 | Group Exhibition in the Wickham House at the Valentine Museum | Richmond, VA
February 20, 2024 – April 21, 2024
Our America/Whose America? Is a “call and response” exhibition between contemporary artists and historic ceramic objects.
Pearlware, Polish, and Privilege: Artwork by Paul Scott
2022-2023 | Solo Exhibition at LSU Museum of Art | Baton Rouge, LA
Pearlware, Polish, and Privilege: Artwork by Paul Scott Featuring works from New American Scenery, on view October 27, 2022–February 26, 2023
NEW AMERICAN SCENERY: The Art of Paul Scott
2022-2023 | Solo Exhibition at The Albany Institute of History & Art | Albany, NY
New American Scenery Has been exhibiting internationally since 2019.
This exhibition features the artwork of Scott, paired with transferwares, prints and paintings from the Albany Institute’s collection.
CONFECTED, BORROWED & BLUE at the Shelburne Museum
The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT
May 11, 2024 – October 20, 2024
RIVERS FLOW/ARTISTS CONNECT | Hudson River Museum
The Hudson River Museum | Yonkers, NY
February 2, 2014 – September 1, 2024
Featuring work by Paul Scott, Courtney M. Leonard, Jason Walker
Our America/Whose America?
Ferrin Contemporary at The Wickham House
The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA
February 20 – April 21, 2024
NEW AMERICAN SCENERY: The Art of Paul Scott
NAS FEATURED IN CONFECTED, BORROWED & BLUE
at The Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT
May 11, 2024 – October 20, 2024
Conversing in Clay: Ceramics from the LACMA Collection
LACMA, Los Angeles, CA
August 7, 2022 – May 21, 2023
- MELTING POINT
- PAUL SCOTT and Fran Siegel: Seam & Transfer | Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
- STRIKING GOLD: Fuller at Fifty, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA
- FLORA/FAUNA | Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY
- LOOKING WEST at The James J. Hill House in St. Paul, MN
- CANARY SYNDROME
- REVIVE, REMIX, RESPOND
- ALICE IN WONDERLAND
- PORCELAINIA: East Meets West
- RE—Reanimate, Repair, Mend and Meld
- MENDED WAYS | The Art of Inventive Repair
- SCENERY: Gardens, Bridges, Trucks, Turbines and Willows
- NCECA 2015 Conference: “Lively Experiments”
- NEW YORK CERAMICS & GLASS FAIR 2015
- MADE IN CHINA : The New Export Ware
- THE POTTER’S TALE: Contextualizing 6,000 Years of Ceramics
- CERAMIC TOP 40
- AMERICAN SCENERY
- CUMBRIAN BLUE(S): A Solo Exhibition of Recent Works by Paul Scott
- HORIZON: Landscapes, Ceramics and Prints
- NEW BLUE AND WHITE
VIDEOS
LECTURE | “Cumbrian Blue(s): New American Scenery, Transferwares for the 21st Century”
Sunday, November 16, 5:00 pm
Paul Scott, ceramics artist, was invited to speak through the Paula G. Manship Endowed Lecture Program at the College of Art & Design on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. in 103 Design Building Auditorium.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: ILLUSTRATED CERAMICS AND AMERICAN IDENTITY
Panelists: Leslie Ferrin, Elizabeth Alexander, Jacqueline Bishop, Judy Chartrand, Niki Johnson, and Paul Scott.
Hidden in plain sight, illustrations on porcelain and ceramic ware have, throughout history, transformed functional objects into message-bearers for a wide range of political and propagandistic causes, whether exchanged by heads of state or acquired for use or display in domestic settings. Leslie Ferrin of Ferrin Contemporary will discuss the imagery, drawn from popular nineteenth-century prints, that was reproduced on widely distributed ceramics portraying historical events, indigenous people, and notable explorers, inventors, and politicians through a white European lens. The panel will explore how these seemingly ordinary objects, including Rockwell collector plates, have helped to establish firmly held beliefs about American identity. Artists Elizabeth Alexander, Jacqueline Bishop, Judy Chartrand, Niki Johnson, and Paul Scott, will discuss contemporary ceramics, which reject systems of racial oppression and invite reconsideration of the sanitized version of history that was presented for generations.
View Hidden in Plain Sight: Illustrated Ceramics and American Identity
PAUL SCOTT New American Scenery | Plate engraving with Paul Scott and Paul Holdway
October 13, 2021. Produced by The Bowes Museum. Ceramic artist Paul Scott tells us more about his collaboration with former SPODE engraver, Paul Holdway. Part of the New American Scenery Project.
September 15, 2021. Ferrin Contemporary Curator Conversation featuring artists Courtney M. Leonard, Paul Scott, and Norwood Viviano. Moderated by Jami Powell, Ph.D., Curator of Indigenous Art, Hood Museum, Dartmouth University (Hanover, NH).
FOUNDERS’ HOUR FEATURING Paul Scott with Leslie Ferrin & Brian Gallagher
June 11, 2021 | The Mint Museum’s Founders’ Circle is pleased to present their first ever International Founders’ Hour featuring UK-based artist, Paul Scott. From his studio in Cumbria, Scott creates contemporary versions of traditional blue and white transferware ceramics, updating this historic media for the 21st century. Scott’s work engages political and social issues that resonate with our lives today, questioning the cultural history of transferware ceramics in the dissemination of national ideas and settler-centric narratives.
View Founders’ Hour featuring Paul Scott with Leslie Ferrin & Brian Gallagher
June 7, 2021 | For the 50th anniversary of Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox exhibition, RISD Museum invited eight contemporary artists and collectives to mine the museum, taking inspiration from objects or incorporating objects into new installations that reconsider how collections can be reimagined.
CATALOGS
PAUL SCOTT: Ceramics and Print
- Published by University of Pennsylvania Press, Third Edition, 2012
- Ceramics and Print presents a full range of techniques for printing on clay from low-tech monoprints to digital laser decals. The latest digital technologies, 3-d printing, photographic techniques, and studio-based transfer processes are explored in detail. “It is inspiring.”
- 144-page, full-color, softbound book
Horizon: Transferware and Contemporary Ceramics
- Published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, Germany edited by Paul Scott and Knut Astrup Bull
- An exploration of the impact and importance of printed tablewares, now making a comeback. The new artwork reflects a significant cultural impact around the world. Horizon melds historical enquiry with contemporary practice.
- 220 pages, illustrated hardcover
‘Raid the Ice Box Now’ Digital Catalog
- Produced by the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 2019
- To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its exhibition Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol, the RISD Museum is engaging contemporary artists and designers Pablo Bronstein, Nicole Eisenman, Pablo Helguera, Beth Katleman, Simone Leigh, Sebastian Ruth, Paul Scott, and Triple Canopy to create new bodies of work or create a unique curatorial project using the museum as a site for critical, creative production and presentation. Employing the galleries and digital platforms as well as spaces beyond the museum walls, these artists will question dominant narratives and highlight the strengths and idiosyncrasies of the museum’s collection, which includes more than 100,000 works spanning ancient times to the present. A landmark example of artist-curated museum exhibitions, Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol (1970) presented entire sections of objects as they appeared in storage, with little or no connoisseurial regard for their condition, authenticity, or art historical status. It remains one of the most celebrated and subversive exhibitions in contemporary art history.
- Raid the Icebox Now is made possible by a lead grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the RISD Museum Associates, Judy and Robert Mann, Taylor Box Company, and a generous in-kind gift from Meyer Sound Laboratories.
SELECT PRESS
& ARTIST NEWS
Recent Features
Financial Times
“Politics on a plate: how ceramics became a tool for satire and protest”
Financial Times March 15, 2024
Article by Malaika Byng
A new exhibition celebrates the ‘Trojan horse’ of the decorative arts
Ceramics Now
“The magician’s trick”
Ceramics Now September/October 2022
Article by Ellen Bell
Ellen Bell reviews Paul Scott’s latest exhibition, a new collection of blue and white transferware that feture hard-hitting political messages on American history
“A mastercalss in blue and white transferware, Scott’s new collection is also a bravura performance in sleight of hand….For things are not as they seem…“
The Guardian
“Traditional china serving up the big issues of today in pictures“
the Guardian Article by Kathryn Bromwich
Blue and white transferware plates were hugely popular in the 19th century for their bucolic pastoral scenes. Over the past 30 years, artist Paul Scott, who lives in Cumbria, has updated the medium to address some very modern issues: the climate emergency, the refugee crisis, tensions in the Middle East.
“On the Threshold: Paul Scott New American Scenery”
Essay by Jo Dahn
When he began to experiment with printing on ceramics Paul Scott soon found himself in liminal territory: his creative practice was becoming unclassifiable. ‘In those days’, he has said, ‘there was no-one around me who was doing anything remotely similar, but that’s a double-edged sword: it launches you into a no-man’s-land, because you’re not a painter or a fine art printmaker and you’re not a potter or a craftsperson … In a way I enjoyed it immensely because I was doing things that people hadn’t seen before.’
“Paul Scott’s Confected Landscapes and Contemporary Vignettes”
Essay by Amy Gogarty
The work disccussed in this article relates to reasearch conducted during the course of his PhD, yet it embodies themes that have preoccupied him for some time. These include theories of picturesque landscape painting; the remediation and circulation in print form of such painting; domestic ceramic objects printed with landscape imagery and a host of contemporary issues concerning relationships between human civilization and the natural world.
“Exhibition | ‘Home Truths,’ Paul Scott’s Brutal Blue and White Porcelain Plates”
Cfile.Capsule
Re-purposing these cultural artifacts in such a way as to offer new narrative interpretations that encourage re-examination. Drawing from his encyclopedic knowledge of and fascination with the material, he alters, erases and adds new images to the intricately detailed scenes and patterns of these domestic items, whereby the imagery is ruptured and recalibrated for a contemporary world. Scott’s interventions enable him to explore a range of issues from ecology to the refugee crisis.
Paul Scott in CLAYSCAPES | Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
ARE WE THERE YET? Featured in the Berkshire Eagle
Paul Scott’s New American Scenery Featured in The Guardian
OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA? Featured in the Berkshire Eagle
SOUVENIR OF SELMA | PAUL SCOTT | New American Scenery
Paul Scott’s Valuable Lessons, Arteidolia, December 2019
PAUL SCOTT, ‘Raid the Ice Box’ digital catalog
Revive, Remix, Respond at The Frick Pittsburgh
C-File: RE-Reamimate, Repair, Mend, and Meld
Bill Rogers, Managing Editor of C-File, reviews RE-Reanimate, Repair, Mend and Meld at Ferrin Contemporary. “The aesthetics of and philosophical questions surrounding repairs were explored in-depth with RE-Reanimate, Repair, Mend…
RE—Reanimate, Repair, Mend and Meld
RE—REANIMATE, REPAIR, MEND AND MELD co-curated by Paul Scott and Andrew Baseman a group show of work by contemporary ceramic artists explores the issues of conservation, restoration, over-consumption, reuse, and…
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