Van Duysen’s collection of pots for ‘when objects work’ is an exercise in restrained theme and variation. Powerful although each piece is in isolation, the collection is conceived as an entity, the differences of scale and colour creating powerful rhythms and modulations expressed in a subtle but intense palette of a northern European sky.

Each piece is composed of two elements: an earthenware container and a wooden plate. Whilst the angle of the curve and the smooth profile of each pot are fixed, the diameter and height of the vessels vary, these shifts in scale determining whether the container framed is a bowl or a platter. The thickness of the wooden plate which serves as both cover and plinth is also variable.

Serene and sober, these pots have the abstract quality of the archetypal, but they have been pulled from abstraction into the world of physical forms, into things you want to touch and to hold, a certain material roughness is critical to their character – the slight irregularities in the surface of the clay and the soft, weathered grain of the wood.

When Objects Work

Publications:

Financial Times - Christmas Unwrapped, November 2010

Photography:

Alberto Piovano