Edmund de Waal

Sotheby's London, February 1999, lot 6, where acquired by the present owner

Executed circa 1996, this Lidded Jar is considered an earlier work in the esteemed ceramic practice of ceramicist and writer Edmund du Waal. It was produced around the same as the artist’s involvement in the group show titled ‘Soft Clay’ at the Contemporary Applied Arts London. It contains all the hallmarks of his practice: a light blue celadon glaze, with pinched and impressed detailing to the side.

Claiming to have an ‘obsession’ with porcelain and its inherent qualities of lightness and purity, du Waal dedicates his practice to throwing vessels with glazes that emphasise this simplicity of form. Often the impression of du Waal’s hand-building and crafting of these vessels is left visible on the pot, while the overall surface remains completely smooth. His vessels are built and fired to the extent that they have an unexpected weightlessness: at once they both embrace and defy their medium.

This coincides with de Waal’s wider interests in personal narratives, memory and materiality across his art and his writing.