Edmund de Waal

Without really trying, I've become a bit of a follower of Edmund de Waal (not in a Twitter sense - he has yet to tweet).

It all started with his book, The Hare With Amber Eyes, which I read a couple of years ago and really liked.

As a result of that, I checked out his "Signs and Wonders" installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum - a steel channel running around the perimeter of the dome above the entrance, into which de Waal has arranged lots of pots he's made, pots that echo his favourite exhibits in the ceramic galleries.

Here's a video about it:
  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/e/video-edmund-de-waal-signs-and-wonders/

I used this as a starting point for a submission for the V&A's "Inspired by" competition while I was going to evening classes on glass at Plymouth College of Art (which got me hooked on doing a degree).

I started out thinking I would make a small section of his curved channel in glass and then place some glass objects in it.    To cut a long story short, I ended up casting the channel as 6 segments, changing the section so the channel looked more like a breaking wave and then beaming light up through them by placing them over a hollow plinth in which I installed lots of light emitting diodes.

More info on this here: http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=17&s=0

In other words, I ended up with something that didn't have much to do with "Signs and Wonders".  I don't like it much.  (Neither did the V&A).

Anyhow, the reason I'm bringing this up is that Edmund de Waal was on the TV twice last week:

In  "Edmund de Waal: Make Pots or Die", a documentary about him, his book, and his preparations for his first exhibition in the U.S.:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03hcmmp/imagine..._Winter_2013_Edmund_de_Waal_Make_Pots_or_Die/

and in "What Do Artists Do All Day No. 6: Edmund de Waal"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03hd9hd/What_Do_Artists_Do_All_Day_Edmund_de_Waal/

I must admit I decided I didn't like Edmund de Waal after watching the "Make Pots or Die" documentary.  The programme jumped around quite a lot and Edmund came across as too much of an aesthete for my liking.  I bet he got bullied at school.

I didn't think de Waal's pots looked anything special and I didn't "get" de Waal's pre-occupation with the way his pots were arranged, the spaces between them, and how that was related to the poetry and music that de Waal is so familiar with.

I changed my mind during the second programme.   I don't think it was spelled out but I (finally) got the message.  It's all about "vitrines" as de Waal calls them - the glass cabinets he used to peer into on his many visits to the V&A ceramic galleries as a youngster.  Actually, it goes back even further - to peering at his uncle's collection of netsuke in a vitrine, the basis of The Hare With Amber Eyes.

So, de Waal isn't just making pots.  He's making the modern equivalent of vitrines and arranging pots within in them.  The position of the pots,  the spaces between them and how much of them you can see (in some installations some of the pots are partially obscured behind sand-blasted glass)  are evocative of poetry and music, and also hark back to de Waal's family history.

Check out de Waal's website for one of his latest installations:

http://www.edmunddewaal.com

I can see the music and poetry in this - the way the pots come in waves, a bit like the way those strings of punched cards are fed into street organs.

I can see the connection between de Waal's vitrines, with lots of long shelves fairly close together, and the single shelf created by the channel in "Signs and Wonders".

It's got me wondering what came first - whether "Signs and Wonders" was an extension of vitrines de Waal was already making, or whether "Signs and Wonders" was the starting point?

Lots more images of de Waal's work here:
http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=edmund%20de%20waal&rs=ac&len=14