In contact with the past

Sometimes you feel suddenly connected to the past. You see an old photo, you whistle a song your grandfather always whistled or … you make ceramic birds.

Ancient-Iranian-Cermamics — Ancient Iranian Ceramics, Sackler Gallery

A few months ago I read an article in Ceramics Monthly about the exhibition “Ancient Iranian Ceramics“. It was a small exhibition of ceramics from about 3,000 years ago (!). These ceramic objects where excavated in the area south of the Caspian Sea in what is now modern Iran.

The small installation showed a number of treasures from the collection of the Sackler Gallery. It celebrates the talents of the ancient Iranian potters and shows the high quality of their works.

Face to face with the past

I was struck by one of the pictures in the article, a jug in the shape of a bird…. It was exactly the kind of work I make.

Well not exactly:

Technique (hand-shaped versus thrown on the wheel)
Type of ceramics (earthenware versus stoneware)
Finish (unglazed monochrome versus colorful glazed)
Function (to be used as jug versus purely decorative)

These are all different, but the idea is the same. Every potter recognizes in a classic form (yes, even 3,000 years ago a jug was already “classical”) the resemblance to the birds around him or her.

Eathenware-ewer-northern-Iran-1900-800-bce — Earthenware jug, Northern Iran 1900-800 BC.

Technological progress versus aesthetic evolution

The world of these potters of antiquity cannot be compared to the world in which I find myself. The function of the objects he/she made have disappeared in the fog of antiquity.

Perhaps the objects have served in certain (religious) rituals. Maybe these shapes were no individual creations, but part of a long and rich tradition. Whatever the case, these anonymous Iranian potters from the past have touched and connected me to the past.

It also confirms my sense that humanity’s aesthetic awareness is not speeding forward with great strides as in the natural sciences. As for instance this weeks proof of the Higgs Boson particles (again a tremendous progress in scientific thinking about matter). But aesthetics is more like a slow and steady evolutionary growth.

Ceramic birds an ancient tradition

As a ceramist you stand with one leg in the past and with one leg in the future. You feel connected to the past, but you communicate in a language that can (or should) also be understood in the future.

I (and many other ceramists) have deliberately disconnected function from form. For me, form and material have the potential to convey my aesthetic values from the past to the present and hopefully to the future. So the tradition remains uninterrupted….

About Post Author

Daniel Bende

Designs and creates under the trade name DFB-ceramics hand-thrown stoneware figurative ceramics.

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