Session 44 summary
In the history of ceramics Anthropomorphism, Zoomorphism and Biomorphism are key elements. The objects shown by Shirley are from the small settlement of early human civilization just like how tribes are described today i.e. living in small groups in a particular area, using the resources well and creating objects that are very unique to that place, both geographically and culturally. Zoomorphism is anything that is inspired by animals. The most ancient everyday objects were inspired by human and animal details like; the supari and nut crackers from India which is made from brass and contains the images of horses, swans and birds. The Rhytons from Iran are from 1st-5th Century B.C. made in silver and gold, they have animal heads like the jaguar, cat, lion, ram, etc. they were put in the riverbed and fill water in them. The same Rhytons were also discovered in terracotta which acted as jugs with the heads of goat and buffalo. Rhytons had only one inlet and outlet for water. In the water pots discovered the designs of ram, goat and bull continues in terracotta, metal and other materials. The water pots of the Indus valley show a raw handmade feel probably done by a skilled or unskilled craftsman for personal use. An Askos vessel is a Greek vessel, very small which is used mostly for oil. There are images of fish from Greece and Peru on the Askos used for storing water. The objects discovered from the Pre-Colombian especially from Peru and Colima have the image of birds picking on the nose, it’s called Horrible Bird and there are a lot of examples of this bird and human head almost like a vulture eating a human head. There are also images of cute parrots in terracotta.
Therianthropic is something in between human and animal and harpy is an old English word used for anti-woman, it is also referred to the ill winds or the stormy winds. Harpies and sirens are same, harpies have a bird form with the head of a woman and the sirens have a body of fish with head of a women, but sirens are considered to be beautiful women who seduce men and harpies are noisy/irritating women. The objects discovered from Africa are human and animal infused from water pots.
Anthropomorphism is taken from the word Anthropology which is the study of humankind. The Etruscan pottery have terracotta pots in the shape of human heads. From Peru water pots were discovered with the Moche culture of depicting erotic art. The Toby jugs are a recent product from the 1700’s, these are bulky jugs of an ugly man with beer which was popular in the 1700s England and most of the English homes will have a toby jug. The Nazca lines are giant drawings which were recently discovered of the Nazca civilization. They had trophy heads as the civilization was known for headhunting. These trophy heads were burial potteries as these pots were used instead of the head which was taken away by the winning head hunter. The pots include images of burial drums, figures of warrior painted with iron oxide to represent blood, holding weapons and human head. Biomorphismare forms inspired by plants and the objects greatly imitate the flowers and leaves of different kinds.
Irregular Beauty: Contemporary and craft-Shirley chose the name ‘Irregular Beauty’ as it is a Japanese term which comes from wabi-sabi (侘寂) i.e. unfinished and handmade things are beautiful. Shirley made some of her works in a factory in Japan which are not easy to make in India. Shirley has been greatly taken by the ancient figural works and feels that tribal society is also very close to nature. In pottery Anthropomorphism is described as how one describes a human body i.e. shoulder, mouth, neck, ear, body, etc. It is remarkable to note that how pottery is described is how one describes themselves. The works in which Shirley puts human details are everyday pottery, and she gives them interesting titles based on the function like ‘Mummy and her Cups (2011)’, ‘Indian Toby jug(2019)’, etc. After her trip to Japan she gave Anthropomorphism a very pop feel inspired by the Kabuki masks. Similar to Toby jugs she also made ‘13 wives of David Ochterlony’. The Antimony house and Copper house are displays created to showcase her works. For the Photo Narrative work she was very much into the idea of telling narratives (stories) through objects, the ceramic objects were put together with paper cuts and Shirley also did microphotography for it. She did some Political work in 2018, in which she took the election promises and created a dinner setting on that. This work shows what politicians promise are never true and mostly useless. So the piece depicted how there is a large lavish dinner but one is unable to consume it.
‘Costumes of the world’ is one of Shirley’s major work. It was a commission that she got in 2014 from Indian School of Business, Mohali. Indian School of Business is very famous and they wanted something permanent, like a permanent artwork for the college. When Shirley and her team visited the college, all the artworks present seemed to be very generic and didn’t seem to say “business”. So Shirley and her husband were researching crafts and decided to create a proposal of creating business ‘Costumes of the World’ done in an Indian craft. The craft which was chosen was from a small village in Karnataka called Channapatana, where they make small figurines. Shirley went to the village and asked if they could scale it up and initially requested many people who didn’t accept. But then an enterprising craftsman called Jaffar agreed to make them. For the research Shirley decided to look at costumes of 18th Century and before because in the present time people are dressed in business suits. She also decided to look into what does business mean actually. She found images of men in long coats with caps similar to the Toby jugs, which is a sailor cap worn by merchants travelling the sea. Pictures of men with big hats and moustaches, Marwari merchants in turbans, angrakha and bahikhotta and Jewish merchants with long beards, curly hair and always dressed in business suits and briefcase were found. She was also looking at museum sites, old books and other materials. As a designer she was doing a photo dump and then going through it and see what is authentic and what is not. She also looked into Merchant of Venice (drama, movie) which had Jewish merchants, she looked at their costumes and the various ways they were interpreted. She also found the Parsi merchants who were dressed in white flowing garments with their unique cap/hat. The images of East India Company had details of the powdered wigs. Shirley was collecting these images and trying to make sense on how to depict them. The process included how to translate that information into an object and to get involved in a lot of talking and discussion. She sent the images to the artist who made some samples which had to be corrected as they were disproportionate. Originally the toys created by the artisans are small but for this project they had to make it larger and larger, and since the artisan is not used to those dimensions so Shirley’s team had to go back to the drawing board and making models of wood in Delhi and send those to the artisan for reference. After they were done, they were painted by an artist in Rajasthan. Once the product was ready Shirley did the photo shoot of them. In the end it is not an authentic representation. They were laid out in the lobby of Indian School of Business.
About the Speaker
Shirley Bhatnagar
Ceramic Designer and Artist
Irregular Beauty
Dehradoon
Shirley is a Ceramic Artist and Industrial designer based in New Delhi, India. She creates quirky hand crafted works in porcelain and stoneware with a sense of humor. Her work often celebrates imperfections and irregularity of the human hand thus the name Irregular Beauty. A graduate of NID Ahmedabad, Shirley having grown up without any kind of exposure to television or internet, had her first brush with international cinema during her first year of college in 1992. Soaking in the works of Jean-Luc Godard and Truffaut led her to express much of it in her own art later on. Shirley loves switching lanes to collaborate with designers and to engage with diverse practices and themes. Likewise, approach to her ceramic work often weaves in parallel processes, bringing in unexpected influences.
