Capturing perfect imperfection
- Barbara has mastered the Nerikomi technique
- Ceramics is her second career
- She’s inspired by the geometry of nature
After a long and successful career on the international stage in the fashion industry, from South Africa to the UK, Barbara Gittings was attracted to ceramics. She began to explore clay as an alternative medium to fabric. When she discovered the ancient Nerikomi technique she fell completely in love with it. Her work in ceramics somehow continues to search how layering and cutting merge to find new balances and forms. Nerikomi is a marbling method which involves staining the clay and then layering different colours, slicing and re-joining numerous times to put patterns through the clay. In her Brighton studio, Barbara works on the multi-layered effects nature creates, while trying “to embrace the accidental”. “My work is quiet, contemplative and tactile. The more one looks, the more one sees.”
Interview
- What is your training background?
- I worked in the fashion industry for 32 years, as a designer and pattern cutter: this is a second career for me. I’ve done many short intensive courses, including a smoke-firing course with Jane Perryman, but I am largely self taught, learning through trial and error.
- How did you choose the Nerikomi technique?
- When I started ceramics I studied every book on the subject that I could find. I came across a picture of an ancient Chinese Nerikomi bowl and started to research Nerikomi and discovered artists like Dorothy Feibleman, Curtis Benzle and Thomas Hoadley – I fell in love with the process.
- Where do you find inspiration?
- In the geometry of patterns in nature. Especially as random chaotic forces, growth, weathering and erosion push the initial perfect symmetry towards imperfection. I’m always exploring this balance between symmetry and asymmetry, trying to capture the imperfect perfection.
- How do you merge tradition and innovation?
- Nerikomi – a contemporary Japanese term – is a marbling technique that was used by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Romans and during the Japanese Momoyama period. In the Japanese method, patterns and repetition are perfect: while I allow chance and the subliminal to direct me.
Barbara Gittings is an expert artisan: she began her career in 2000 and she started teaching in 2022
Where
Barbara Gittings
