Author Archives: Bridget Macklin

So what makes a vessel?  Presumably a vessel is something which carries things, into which you can put ‘stuff’.  So, is it a vessel if there is nothing in it or does the absence of ‘stuff’ make it a potential vessel instead?  And what shape should a vessel be?  presumably that should depend on the nature of the ‘stuff’ for which it is intended.

Our latest project at college is to create our signature vessel.  That got the old grey matter going I can assure you.  What on earth would my signature vessel look like?

I started by looking at the work of ceramicists whose work I like – Ken Eastman, Adam Buickand Lucy Rei to name but a few.  But it strikes me that a lot of emphasis is placed on the appearance of the vessel from the outside in ceramics rather than on the inside.  All these works are amazing but I want to think about the inside more than the outside – after all, if the purpose of a vessel is to contain ‘stuff’ then the interior is important.

With this in mind I have been considering the importance of the various parts of a vessel.  The walls need to be strong enough to hold anything that needs to be contained.  To be strong enough their construction needs careful consideration, I need to consider the layers that might be needed.  The interior – if the material to be contained is precious it needs to be held in a thing of beauty therefore the inside of the piece must be beautiful, glazed as a jewel might be.  The exterior – as long as it is strong, does it matter what it looks like? And so, you end up with something like this:  . . . . .

Right – to the clay . . . . .

I had to give a ten minute presentation about my work at college this week.  Given that I have spent so much of my life standing in front of classes full of pupils and spouting forth at them I thought that this would be a breeze.  yet I rapidly discovered that to stand in front of all your peers and some of your tutors to talk about who you are, what floats your boat and why you make what you do is a whole different ball game.  I had written my presentation weeks in advance because I like to be prepared so I thought that the delivery would be just another ten minutes in the ‘life of . . . ‘  Not so!  I found it really difficult to deliver without reading from the page.  I had great difficulty making eye contact with my audience and by the end my mouth was unbearably dry and my tongue appeared to have taken on a life of its own.  I had to really concentrate to get the words out at all.  Why was that?

I think it has to do with talking about oneself rather than more abstract facts and figures for which one has little responsibility.  It was a bit like bearing my soul, a confession if you like – “I am a ceramic artist and I make ridiculously fragile pieces which are absolutely pointless”.  It makes you justify yourself on an intellectual level – difficult!  As for predicting where I go next, that was like gazing into a crystal ball.  I have never been able to plan where I go next.  Life has been an extremely peripatetic adventure!

I have never been to an addicts’ help group but I found myself wondering whether it would have been easier or more difficult to stand up and admit an addiction.  So, just in case you are wondering, that I am also a sugar-holic and I cannot keep out of the biscuit tin.