Project Type: TOURING EXHIBITION

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.

Albany (Souvenirs & Views of New York)

souvenir plate of an urban landscape viewed through a roadside screen of trees and brush.

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.

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“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.

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“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.

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“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…

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Pattern Samplers

Posy Vases