Tanami Mapping III – Talus Slope: C.5-2017

Titles

Tanami Mapping III – Talus Slope

Maker(s)

Potter: Drysdale, Pippin

Entities

• Vase

Categories

• Hard-paste porcelain
• Studio Ceramics

Description

Porcelain, thrown, spray glazed, incised and filled.

Round porcelain vessel with curviliear swelling form that rises from a very narrow base to a wide, thinly made neck. The exterior is spray glazed, mainly in shades of orange, but with an unevenly shaped band of purple at the top. Running over both is a pattern of roughly evenly and closely spaced narrow incisions, filled with a contrasting dull yellow glaze on the orange part and with orange on the purple band to provide an overall smooth surface. The interior is sprayed a deep red, slightly darker towards th rim. The underside is recessed and glazed orange, within an unglazed foot-rim.

Notes

History note: Pippin Drysdale, Freemantle, Australia; Adrian Sassoon, 14 Rutland Gate, London, SW7 1BB London, from whom purchased by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum using the Dr Ronald Gray Fund

Legal notes

Given by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum from the Ronald Gray Fund

Place(s) associated

• Freemantle ⪼ Western Australia ⪼ Australia

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (2017-01-23) by The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum

Dating

21st Century, Early
Production date: dated AD 2014

Note

Pippin Drysdale (b.1943) works in Freemantle, Western Australia. She completed a Diploma in Advanced Ceramics at the Western Australia School of Art & Design, in 1982, and a BA in Fine Art at Curtin University, in 1986; in 2008 she was appointed a Master of Australian Craft, by the Australian Council for the Arts. Her work documents her journeys through various landscapes, including those of Australia, Pakistan, Italy and Russia. Each vessel, or group, takes its inspiration from a specific site, as well as being part of an ongoing exploration of the ceramic medium. In Drysdale’s own words: ‘I see in an abstract way so I can’t really draw the landscape. I draw emotion and feeling from the landscape’.

This work forms part of one of several series inspired by the vast red landscape of the Tanami Desert in northern Western Australia, begun in 2001-2002. Drysdale uses Southern Ice porcelain clay, thrown thickly at the bottom to provide stability and thinning at the rim to evoke the horizon. The surface preparation involves spray glazing then filling scalpel-cut incisions with a contrasting glaze paste.