Ceramic objects are time machines. The time-collapsing effect of seeing a Roman roof tile with cats’ pawprints tracked across it, or a Minoan vase covered with expressive swooshes of brushstrokes, is the best way of time-travelling I know. Things that were fresh out of the kiln hundreds of years ago are exactly the same as they are now, which is like a kind of magic trick.
The other thing about clay that I love is its egalitarianism – this ubiquitous, cheap material that’s literally dug up out of the ground and used to make everything from priceless Sevres dinner services to pipes carrying our crap away. Such a versatile material is an ideal medium from which to learn about social history, almost all the way back through human history and reflecting every stratum of society. Ceramics always communicate something about the time and place they were produced.
I’m a massive fan of decorated European earthenware made between the 15th and 18th centuries; especially Dutch and English Delftware and Italian Maiolica. There is a very lively narrative element to these types of decorated ceramics, recording the society of the time they were made. Some of the shapes are a bit mystifying as to their use, as items such as posset pots, bleeding bowls and leech jars aren’t used any more, and this adds another layer of social history on top of the painted decorations.
For the last few years, I’ve been hugely enjoying myself researching the history of Delft and Maiolica, and creating my own versions of these styles to share observations about my experience of the society I live in. I like to draw parallels in my work with aspects of life now and the time the originals were made.
This collection of work for the Scottish Gallery is a continuation of my obsession with the Italian Renaissance Maiolica style. The opportunity to create a large body of work gave me the freedom to explore another long-standing preoccupation: the many forms of ever-evolving ‘folk languages’ of signs, symbols, slang, and emojis that all of us understand and use but aren’t taught or learnt in a formal way.
I’m fascinated by the slightly subversive habit we’ve always had of appropriating and repurposing words and symbols for our own devices – alternative languages hiding within a formal structure such as slang, the shorthand visual communication of hand signs and so on. It’s all very much a punk-rock way of repurposing and subverting existing language structures that makes language so alive and I find this endlessly fascinating.
Because I spend so much of my time looking at images of Maiolica in books, online and in museums, I’ve accidentally developed a kind of ‘Renaissance lens’ through which I engage with contemporary things like social media, the news etc. This is how it struck me that our habit of using emojis in text-speak very much mirrors the use of signs and symbols in the Renaissance. Part of the collection illustrates this with a mixture of emojis and Renaissance symbols. There is also a foray into the cheeky world of 18th century slang words for male and female genitals in the form of two large ‘Tree of Life’ tile panels, framed in the style of Andrea della Robbia with relief sculptures of the nudge-wink emojis for males and females.
I’ve always appreciated a little injection of humour. There’s something very democratic about a joke, especially a slightly cheeky one. It’s a very inclusive way of communicating with, rather than lecturing or talking down to, that is completely right for me and the things I want to talk about. It’s such a welcoming, conversational approach to discussing cultural history - especially Art history, which tends to be seen as one of those subjects that isn’t accessible to everyone. I hope my work brings with it the message that our cultural heritage of Art history and ‘the Classics’ belongs to all of us, not just the fortunate few like me who were educated in these subjects.
Two ‘Tree of Life’ Tile Panels
Inspired by the spectacular tile panels made by Andrea della Robbia, framed with relief sculptures of fruits, leaves and flowers, each of which had a particular symbolic meaning linked to the subject within the frame. These two tile panels represent the Tree of Life; one male and one female, and illustrate some of the many 18th century slang words for male and female genitalia, framed with the appropriate emojis for both – the aubergine and the peach.
I really like the way that some emojis, like the aubergine, have been repurposed to mean things other than the original intention – a great example of how people appropriate things and use them for their own purposes rather than sticking to the official meaning. I love the typically British ‘seaside postcard’ humour of these 18th century slang words. Also, the slightly hostile element of some of the euphemisms for the female parts, such as ‘nettle bed’, ‘cauldron’ and ‘tinder box’ is a great window into the misogyny of the era.
The symbolism of the Snake
Is there another animal that has so many attributes, both bad and good, attached to it? The entry for the Snake or Serpent in James Halls’ ‘Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art’ runs to a good page and a half, and I’m struck by the similarities between the negative attributes ascribed to the snake and those attached to women throughout history – duplicitousness, cunning, guile and the temptation to evil that are ascribed to both. But the positive attributes of the snake are just as numerous: healing, intelligence, renewal, wisdom, and so on – and I wanted to highlight these qualities as opposed to the bad ones to give the snake a chance for rehabilitation: a kind of ‘me too’ opportunity for the much-maligned snake.
Italian Renaissance symbols and Emojis
In the 15th and 16th centuries, most people were illiterate, but on the other hand they would have been very well-versed in the pictographic language of signs and symbols. Anyone who saw an altarpiece in a church, for example, would have understood straight away what the significance of a dog, a pomegranate or a peacock contained in the imagery would have signified – and it struck me that the relatively recent and expanding lexicon of emojis used by all of us is a direct equivalent of those symbols of the past, understood by everyone. To highlight this, I made a collection of frilled edge bowls, pedestal dishes and syrup jars that mix together Renaissance symbols and emojis. It is quite hard to work out which is which, and there are a few overlaps.
Hand emojis
On a recent holiday to Italy, I discovered a dictionary of commonly used Italian hand signs and gestures. Some of these were instantly recognisable as the same hand signs in the lexicon of emoji hand shapes – another ‘folk language’ that we all understand and use, and that has organically evolved over just the last few years as a pictorial shorthand for texting. I was fascinated to learn along the way that the first emojis were invented by a group of Japanese high school girls to communicate with each other by pager – and look at how ubiquitous they are now!
Mottoes To Celebrate Ageing
All mottoes must have been invented at one time or another. I thought I might as well add to the pantheon with some of my own, focusing on the positive aspects of being an ageing, menopausal woman. Some of these mottoes are Google-translated into Latin, to make them sound as if they’ve been around for a long time: plus, as I learned in the Boris Johnson era, any old thing sounds amazing when translated into Latin!
An Apothecary of Wellness Advice
John Wesley is well known as the theologist who led the movement known as Methodism in the early 18th century. Less well known is the collection of home remedies for common ailments he published in 1732, called ‘Primitive Physic’. Some of the advice for general health and well-being that Wesley wrote in the introduction to this book seems completely nonsensical to our modern understanding of physiology; on the other hand some of it is remarkably similar to ‘wellness’ advice shared today by popular health personalities including the much loved and missed Michael Moseley. To celebrate Mr Moseley and to trace his advice back through time to John Wesley, I made a collection of albarello and wet drug jars, half inscribed with tips from Primitive Physic and the other half with Moseley’s ‘Just One Thing’ recommendations.
