Halloween

My friends and me at Halloween party at Royal College of Art. It's Royal Albert Hall in the background.

First project at the Royal College of Art

THE V&A PROJECT:

Make a tea cup!

Do I look like someone who does tea cups!?

Or plates? Or tea pots? (Well, I once did a tea pot. It worked well as a sprinkler for a football pitch! Now it's in someone’s garden retiring as a flowerpot.)

But nonetheless that was the assignment; well it might not have been put so strictly. We were required in our work to have a reference to some kind of classic vessel and then we should choose an inspirational object at the V&A museum from which we should pick up some technical details that we wanted to focus on and then translate them into our work.



Working on my first project, the park in the background is Hyde Park. The first week in college, we went to the V&A museum to find this inspirational object. But I must say; in this museum there are quite a few things to choose from! And I hate decisions, imaging that picture. I did like everything equestrian (long love for horses) and there was plenty of them depicted in various ways; done as figurines, depicted on plates and bigger sculptures etc. But as one of my tutors correctly pointed out, maybe a horse was a fairly large animal for such a short project. Especially because the project mainly was to get us used to work in the studio and become familiar with the workshops. Not to mention the difficulties it could cause trying to make a horse into a cup.
 

 

I spent the two first weeks trying to find my way around doing a cup - until I finally confronted myself with what this was about? Why was I reacting so strongly to this? Could it have something to do with being insecure about my identity as an artist? I had to ask myself if it really was going to ruin my carrier doing a cup. The answer was, probably not. If it went wrong, I could just keep quiet and not tell anyone (apart from you of course). In this time I guess I was sent back to the museum 3 times before I suddenly saw something I could use. And there it was: The Kiss. And from that moment on, I just knew that I had found and embraced my own inner tea cup.

The kiss was the Greek goddess Psyke kissing another mythological figure. It has always been intriguing to me how you can get away with showing quite provocative or controversial things as long as it is disguised in an aesthetic subtlety. I did slip cast the cup for practical reasons. Choosing parian porcelain, to match the surface of the classical marble sculpture.

Parian is a kind of odd clay, it's a type of porcelain, but more translucent and it's self-glazing with a smooth surface and silky shine. In the past it was used for white marble imitation. 

You win some and you loose some :-) The inexperienced caster is lacking patience. For those of you not so familiar with slip casting: It is not supposed to look like this, it's supposed to release the mould in one piece nice and easily. 

Douglas White: New Skin for an old Cermony



Installing the work in the gallery, Paradise Row Gallery, London

Read more about the exhibition and see photos of the finished work here (will open in a new window) 

My friend and I, private view, Douglas White's New Skin for an old Cermony, Paradise Row, London