Connections/Clay

My name is Jeff Munger, and I'm curator in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts, and my topic is "Clay."

My interest in clay goes back a long time. Somewhat embarrassingly

I attempted to be a potter in school. I found I had no aptitude for throwing pots, but

I loved working with the material, and it was endlessly exciting

to see what would happen when the kiln door was finally opened. The kind of pots that I tried to create

were very much influenced by Japanese ceramics, primarily those for the tea ceremony.

I was fascinated by the roughness of the clay, by the abstract use of

glazes, by the accidents that could happen in the kiln, the different temperatures, anything can affect it.

One of the things that most appeals to me about ceramics is the sense of immediacy and spontaneity.

You really have the sense of the potter working directly on the object.

With clay, you're essentially taking something out of the earth, firing it, and then it transforms into something completely different.

Because clay itself does not have inherent value or worth, the value that we see in these objects is the vision and the skill that the potter has brought to them.

The natural world has attracted potters for millennia. Bernard Palissy

literally took casts of frogs, of snakes, of

shells, and used those casts to make these nonfunctional

highly decorative and rather bizarre objects.

There's something about the color of terra cotta, of the clay itself

which is evocative of skin, which gives a kind of presence that you wouldn't find in a marble or a bronze.

I find it remarkable that potters can work with mineral oxides that look like various shades of mud

and yet somehow after they're fired achieve extraordinary colors.

Ceramics could also serve as a canvas for potters. This vase has these beautifully modeled highly detailed flowers that creep up the side, extended by

painting two dimensional flowers onto the surface. I'm particularly fond

of Toshiko Takaezu, as she was the potter with whom I studied. She was the best of teachers, infinitely patient, but she taught me enormous respect for basic materials, for the possibility of chance. You can't control what happens in the firing.

This stoneware jar, the uneven rim

the bulges on the side, the lack of symmetry

are really the essence of clay, and it was a good lesson that there really are no guarantees in life.

George Ohr, you can feel that he has taken his hands and

crushed this vase that is completely abstract, yet to me celebrates the clayness itself.

I wasn't good at either throwing or glazing but the sheer experience of trying to do both

made me especially appreciative of

the skills of the potters whose works I now handle today. I can see

the lines of a vase that has been raised on the wheel

the tool marks where a handle has been applied or details have been freshened. I approach

these objects differently and in a more tactile way, having some sense of what is involved

in creating the final product.