Maintaining tradition
Ceramicist brings European sensibility to her art in NZ, writes Peter Simpson
Vonney Ball has lived in New Zealand since 1995 but had been making ceramics in England since the early 1980s and her practice was wellestablished before she settled here. Although she has modified her practice in various ways to relate to her new environment — for instance, by including an erupting Rangitoto and fluttering fantails among the surface decorations of a form she calls Artemesia Aotearoa Willow Pattern — her work still reflects her training in England and maintains a distinctly European “look” in its forms, colours and decorative motifs.
This is no bad thing. Her presence adds to the variety of ceramic practice in this country, much as Ernie Shufflebotham did a couple of generations ago when he brought his “hand potted” skills from Wedgewood to Crown Lynn.
Ball belongs, though, to a different tradition of English ceramics. Shufflebotham was industry-trained whereas Bell was a product of the excellent tertiary craft training available in England in the 1970s, first at Hertfordshire College of Art & Design, then at Middlesex Polytechic, from which she graduated in 1981. The Bloomsbury Group, including Omega designs and the colours of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, was a strong early influence.
As Helen Shamroth explains in her informative and lively text, Ball was stymied in her aspiration to become a designer for one of the major pottery firms by the drastic decline in the English industry (numbers fell from
79,000 in 1948 to 22,000 by 1991). Instead, she followed a popular alternative in the Thatcher era by setting up a small independent business in partnership with a colleague as Windsor & Ball, producing tableware described by one commentator as “fresh modern stuff; clean and simple, decorated with lots of cute shapes with strong patterns and decorative elements”, sold in places like Harrods.
Most New Zealand ceramics are thrown on a wheel or handbuilt and although Ball has added handbuilt forms to her repertoire, most of her work stems from the different tradition of slipcasting used in industrial ceramics.
The process begins by cutting a model on a plaster lathe, creating a master from which a plaster mould is made.
Liquid clay, known as casting slip, is poured into the mould then removed for biscuit firing and a secondary glaze firing. Multiple pots can thus be made from a single mould with individuality being provided by subsequent decoration through transfers, cut-outs or painting. The whole process is well illustrated in the book by a series of studio photographs by Geoff Ball (no relation).
Certain forms with names such as Amrose Jar, Jub Jub jar, Three-legged Urn, Saracen Vase and Baluster Jar are repeated multiple times with different colours, glazes and surface decorations, including paisley patterns, Chinese-style willow patterns, and even Maori kowhaiwhai.
A different aspect of Ball’s work is represented by some sculptural pieces. For example, the thought-provoking Settled in the Soil, consists of a pile of slip-cast earthenware cattle bones decorated with old-fashioned rose motifs.
She says the cast “bones” allude to the impact of European migrants on the land, colonial settlement and the effects of grazing and deforestation.
Rose motifs suggest the “abiding relationship with the mother country” and a link to teadrinking and English domestic ware.
Ball has been fortunate in the talented team assembled to present her work comprehensively and attractively, including writer Shamroth (plus a written contribution from English textile designer Annie Sherbourne), photographer Ball (both colour and black and white images) and excellent design and production by Strategy Creative and Massey University Press.
VONNEY BALL CERAMICS
by Helen Shamroth (Massey University Press, $45)