Steve Harrison: The Witches

13 Oct 2021-31 Jan 2022

Overview

Blue Mountain School is pleased to announce The Witches, the first ever series of ceramic candlesticks and chambersticks from ceramicist Steve Harrison.

Taking inspiration from a poetic vision of pagan rural history, as well as Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s seminal essay on aesthetics In Praise Of Shadows, Harrison has crafted three seminal triptychs of candle holders from ceramic, moon gold gilded timber and patinated bronze components.

The Witches, a symbiotic creation in clay with beeswax. A combination that has remained unchanged for centuries.

Two independent triptychs explore the relationship between size and scale, light and dark and illumination and shadows.

Each candlestick and chamber-stick stands out individually, containing all the magic of the collective group. To take one away reveals more, not less.

—Steve Harrison

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Steve Harrison (b. 1967, Wallsend, UK) lives and works in London and Wales. Harrison graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Ceramics in 1993. Selected solo exhibitions include The Loft Pots: Firing, Selection and Contemplation 2000–2019 at Blue Projects, Blue Mountain School, London (2019), Tea House, Tea at the Table, Pots, The Potter’s Pots and Big in Japan at Arts & Science, Tokyo (2009, 2012, 2014, 2017, 2019); and Cup Board at Globe-trotter, London (2015). Harrison has collaborated with the Lion Salt Works Trust in 2000 and with Globe-Trotter in 2018, alongside an exhibition of his work entitled Steve Harrison: Travelling with Tea– From the Pit to the Palace. Harrison is the recipient of the Queensbury Hunt Tableware award in 1991 and the Acme Malls award for work in the V&A’s Ceramics Contemporaries exhibition in 1996, as well as the Craft Council award, which enabled him to set up his workshop in Enfield and his salt kiln in Wales. Until 2009, Harrison was a visiting lecturer in ceramics at The University of Manchester, University of Kent and Camberwell College of the Arts, London.