In among the paintings, sculptures, works on paper, textiles and other objects in the Kettle’s Yard house are numerous ceramic pieces. Some of these are by celebrated studio potters including Lucie Rie and William Staite-Murray, while others were industrially produced and have no maker’s mark connecting them to a particular ceramicist.
Until recently, there was a large, fluted bowl on the bookshelves in the Library area by an unknown maker. It was made from earthenware with a tin glaze in either Spain or the South of France and dated from the late 19th century. It’s likely that it was bought by Jim and Helen Ede while they were living at Les Charlottières, a farmhouse near Blois, in the Loire Valley, between 1952-56.
On an unusually hot day in the summer of 2022, the museum wax which was holding the bowl in its place on the shelves, melted and the bowl fell to the floor and smashed. While the main body of the bowl remained mostly intact, the edges shattered into many small shards. The bowl was immediately taken off display and the Curatorial team started investigating options for repairing or replacing it.
Specialist ceramics conservators were consulted, who advised that while a repair would be possible, it would not be seamless. Our next option was to source a replacement. We discovered that contemporary, mass-produced fluted bowls were relatively easy to source, but had a very different finish and feel to the original dish. And despite extensive searching, we were unsuccessful in our attempts to track down a period equivalent through auctions or private sellers. (We briefly contemplated taking a trip to the Loire Vallery to scour flea markets for more authentic replacements but weren’t particularly confident of our chances of success!)
Finally, we came up with a solution. In the spirit of Jim Ede’s openness to creating replicas and casts of original artworks, and his consistent desire to support artists, we commissioned David Stonehouse, a local Cambridge artist who has worked with Kettle’s Yard many times over the years, to create a copy of the bowl. David currently makes a collection of hand-thrown stoneware for our Kettle’s Yard shop, referencing some of its familiar motifs and details.
We asked David some questions about his experience of re-making the bowl:
What were your thoughts on seeing the bowl?
I can imagine why Jim and Helen Ede might have been drawn to this large bowl. Although utilitarian and undecorated, from its position on top of the library bookshelves, its flutes respond to the ever-changing light in the room. Its form also echoes the nearby ceramic jelly moulds and is reminiscent of the shells they collected and displayed.
From a maker’s perspective, the bowl is a humble, mass-produced item with a number of imperfections. There’s unevenness in the thickness of the rim and a large chip on the underside, which was just glazed in production rather than the bowl being scrapped. Where the glaze has worn through, the exposed porous earthenware has become discoloured.
What were your main considerations when you set about re-making the bowl?
One of the questions that came up when we looked at the broken pieces was whether we were trying to achieve a total facsimile with all its imperfections and signs of use, or a replacement as close as pragmatically possible to the original, as if Jim had asked a local potter to make him a copy. The latter seemed more truthful and fitting, and closer to the house’s curatorial practice of replacing items as they wear.
Having studied the bowl, it’s assumed that it was made using the rudimentary mass-production technique of a mould and a jigger, rather than being slip cast. The process uses two formers, a rotating plaster mould of the bowl’s inner shape onto which the clay is placed, and a blade-like external former of the profile of the outer surface, which compresses and forms the clay as the clay rotates under it.
What were some of the biggest challenges?
How did you match the original bowl’s colour and glazed surface?
The colour was the result of the white earthenware tone showing through the transparent glaze. Colour matching surfaces to be viewed under multiple lighting conditions is notoriously difficult because of a phenomenon called metamerism, so it was agreed that the comparison would be made under daylight since this is predominantly how the piece will be seen.
I trialled different combinations of commercially available white clays, transparent glazes and firing schedules, first using test tiles and then small thrown pots, which give a better indication of how the colour of the clay might change and how glazes might behave under different firing schedules.
And how did the final replica come into being?
The original bowl fragments were reassembled and its profiles carefully measured before being scaled up to allow for shrinkage. A bowl was hand thrown to a diameter of 40cm based on these measurements, using cardboard templates to guide its shape and thickness. Once dried to leather-hard, the inside form was adjusted using turning tools, before the form and details of the underside were carefully turned.
Following this, the positions of the 42 flutes were marked out and their forms painstakingly scraped in Once completed, the bowl was slowly dried before being bisque fired to 999°C. After cooling, it was glazed and then refired to 1090°C, with the temperature selected to try and help match the colour of the original. To allow the replacement to be glazed all over as per the original, it was fired on a number of small spurs, elevating it above the kiln shelf to prevent it from sticking.
Do you have any other thoughts about the process?
Jim and Helen Ede’s home is a delightful treasure trove of inspiration, and there is so much to take in and enjoy. I’m always spotting something I’ve not noticed or reflected on before. As a local artist-maker whose ceramics practice is centred around domestic ware, often in response to specific locations, I feel honoured to have been able, in a small way, to maintain the Edes’ aesthetic vision and careful curation by allowing the bowl to be reinstated.
This project was generously supported by the Art Friends Cambridgeshire in memory of Jean Calhoun.
