Humans are notorious creators. We manipulate the environment to create objects to aid survival, and we create to affirm and express our existence.

Function, when used in relation to craft, is a weight-laden word and is often used to define craft against other forms of creative practice, such as fine art. I am interested in the broad sense of function - in the slipway between utilitarian and symbolic use. Having been a ceramist I've been struck by the rich associations and meanings that accompany the ceramic vessel. Its particular combination of medium and form provide insights into the act of creation. Ceramic vessels store, transport, and transfer a myriad of things and non-things; as with craft practice, they are about the tangible and the intangible, the utilitarian and the symbolic. When we make objects we make sense, and that makes craft a complex communicator.

Work by Stephen Benwell. Image courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.

Ceramic vessels are common companions. We eat meals from them, store all manner of possessions in them, and place them on display as items for contemplation. Archaeological sources generally cite clay figurines found in the Czech Republic as the first ceramic objects. Other sources, such as articles written in the school of Bernard Leach, suggest that utilitarian vessels were constructed prior to symbolic forms. This confusion marks the integral nature of both functions to the form, and it is this very aspect - its ability to straddle the fence of usefulness - that makes it such a fascinating object.

Craft is about modification and transformation. The ceramic medium is particularly interesting in this respect. Discovering how to transform clay into an impervious substance (vitrification) occurred around twenty-six thousand years ago and heralded the Neolithic (‘new stone’) Revolution. Along with the cultivation of grain, the permanent storage that ceramic vessels allowed was an important factor in the development of the first cities on earth.[1]

The process of vitrification, and the hollowness that enables utilitarian function, both play a part in the symbolic power of the ceramic vessel. With its inner and outer aspects, and the potential for flow, the vessel provides an analogy for existence as a permeable boundary between the inner and the outer. The constant flow of information into and out of our bodies both alters our personal perception and alters the external world, resulting in a continual re-evaluation of the nature of existence.

Work by Prue Venables. Photograph by Terence Bogue.

The life of a pot is also analogous to the life of a human: the vessel is formed, hardened, used; it then cracks breaks and returns to the earth (often prematurely). When combined with the significance of the knowledge of vitrification, it is no surprise that these analogies have been incorporated into various creation myths. Nigel Barley outlines in his book Smashing Pots that, “The Judaeo-Christian story, in agreement with the Islamic, gives the typical example of a description of the origin of Man - through the creation of Adam (‘Clay’) - in terms of potting... God is pictured as making Man from Clay”. Parallels exist in Africa where “...clay often plays the part of the primeval matter moulded into human form and infused with spiritual life.”[2]

Stephen Benwell’s studio. Image courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.

In many cultures the ceramic vessel has been intertwined with burial rituals where, particularly in areas of Africa, it is responsible for the transportation of the spirit and the possessions of the spirit to the after-life. The customs of the Mimbres Indians, who inhabited areas of Central America, provide another example. Mimbres grave sites usually contain both utilitarian and symbolic vessels. In burials from the mid-period of the culture, it was customary to break and scatter a specially designed un-used vessel throughout the grave. By the end of this period, instead of breaking the whole bowl, a small piece was knocked out and the bowl placed over the head of the deceased. Anthropologists have suggested that this rupture provided the exit point through which the spirit was released to the after-life. Vessels are often described anthropomorphically with words such as neck, shoulder, lip, and foot. On top of this, their utilitarian function usually involves the hand and the mouth. Food is critical to survival. It is also a marker of celebration and togetherness. Due to its role in these activities the ceramic vessel, whether it is actually engaged in utilitarian use or not, alludes to the necessities of existence. It is thought that the Japanese haniwa figures that adorn the tombs of the Japanese elite developed from a jar present in native pottery.[3] This shift from the utilitarian to the symbolic contributes an additional layer of meaning to the funerary figures: the object that contained what the life required becomes a symbol of the life, and a potent reminder of mortality.

Haniwa in the form of a warrior earthenware Kofun period 300 to 552 CE Gunma Japan. Photograph by Mary Harrsch.

The British ceramist Alison Britton sees the anthropomorphism of ceramic vessels as “a symbol of internal and external comparison... Pots so easily take up the metaphor of the body and the self”. Britton uses this metaphor to make sense of things: “I have no doubts that my pots appear to be the work of someone urban, with a life composed of a mixture of intersecting fragments. The juxtaposition of shapes can be symbolic of states of feeling, ways of relating. The pots are ‘about’ that ordinary experience and they aspire to be worth looking at, or beautiful, in spite of the difficulties.”[4]

Perhaps the best known family of ceramic vessels is the amphorae of the ancient Greeks. For many years, they were considered the epitome of cultural expression of Greek civilization. Recent analysis, however, suggests that they were the ‘lowly’ copies of metal prototypes.[5] Our placement of meaning and value on objects is, to a great extent, formed by dominant systems of thought and available knowledge.

NYC - Metropolitan Museum of Art - Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora. Photograph by Wally Gobetz.

In the West, the ceramic vessel has been perceived as being “merely functional or even more merely decorative”.[6] The writer and sound artist, Paul Carter, suggests another way of understanding craft objects. He describes craft objects as a language of poses, an active part of our environment in a constant state of becoming. The object is not complete when it leaves the hand of the creator; it is complete when it leaves the hand of the user. Carter asserts that it is precisely the relationship craft has with the body that is its strength. He upsets the values underlying the mind/body-art/craft division. Art, he says, “confines and tricks the eye” whereas craft “inhabits a non-linear space of exchange” which works “against the hegemony of the eye, or at least the claims of the imperializing gaze.” Carter describes the material world as a “wealth of physical poses habitual to the conduct of social life”. In this sense, the craft object “mediates between ourselves and our surroundings; it is a vocabulary of concreted poses”.[7]

For Melbourne based ceramist Prue Venables these “concreted poses” represent the human capacity for creation and social ritual: “It’s almost like a biological imperative to do these active things. All around us we have enormous resources, but half the time we don’t see it. I think that there is something about vessels - to use - that helps focus on what you’ve got, on what is there. Putting some food in a nice bowl and sitting down and looking at it, around it, does all sorts of things to people.”[8]

Prue Venables. Photograph by Terence Bogue.

The drive to create and express is perpetual. Making is not only about making an object, but making meaning. The ceramic vessel, with its propensity for both symbolic and utilitarian use, illustrates the complexity of this drive. It is an object around which social interaction takes place, and it is an object that encourages reflection. The ceramic vessel is an example of craft as a practice that involves the considered making of objects which enrich our environment, and our lives.

Eleanor Whitworth is a Melbourne based freelance writer. This article originally appeared in Craft, commissioned in 1999 as part of Writing Craft, a Craft Victoria project aimed at fostering new writers and writings on craft. Writing Craft received financial support from the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s arts funding and advisory body. 

References

[1] Stephen L. Sass, The Substance of Civilization, New York, Arcade Publishing, 1998.