Clay on show
- Amy celebrates historical vase design in her reinterpretations
- She leaves visible marks of her making process in her final pieces
- She connects past, present, and future in her work
Amy Jayne Hughes graduated from the School of Material, RCA in London in 2010. She is a ceramicist who digs into vase design from eras past and reinterprets aesthetics for today. Her signature approach is to emphasise the material used underneath. In her work, there is equal respect for historical designs and for clay as a material: Amy preserves historical design achievements in her innovative reimagination of them. Amy's process involves leaving fingerprints in the clay and sticking cardboard-like pieces onto vases. She consciously leaves her playing visible in the final piece, to put the clay material itself on show. By liberating the material from excessive ornamentation and glaze, Amy reclaims the space for clay and opens our eyes to the possibilities for future vase-making.
INTERVIEW
Recently, I have been investigating using a collage-like approach, using enlarged elements of my sketches, and tracing them directly onto clay surfaces. This process has resulted in my truest interpretations yet. The making process has begun to inform the composition, and I enjoy that.
It is important to leave traces of material identity on a piece to celebrate its uniqueness. This allows for brushstrokes and dribbles of slip, raw cut and torn edges, exposed joints, and considered application of glaze. When I have been too ‘controlling’, I find that the resulting piece often has a lack of joy in it.
I love observational drawing. It captures true character and style, and brings a different perspective to an object. In traditional sketching, people look at their drawing rather than the subject, so the brain fills in the blanks of what it should look like, and therefore it is not a true representation.
The process has succeeded when the origins of a piece are recognised yet have been freshly interpreted and given a new lease of life, not purely a copy of the original. I would like my work to take important historical ceramic collections to a new audience, finding a new home in contemporary culture for them.
