The alchemist of ceramic glazing
- Signe interprets timeless themes in a contemporary way
- She considers working with glazes to be an alchemy
- She works mainly with porcelain
Signe Fensholt, originally an ethnologist, later studied ceramics at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Today she shares a studio with two other ceramicists. Signe creates mainly sculptural objects which harness the dynamic qualities of melting glazes. Traditionally, ceramic glaze exists only as a surface on an object, but in many of Signe's works the glaze actually creates the object's shape. Occasionally she arranges abstract objects into a tableau representing a certain social situation, such as a table setting, which is actually about everything other than the food and the satisfying of basic needs: a shared meal may indicate a relationship or social conventions, or is a way to build a bond within a community.
Discover her work
INTERVIEW
I rely on an age-old tradition for refining and controlling materials and processes. I mainly work with porcelain, a material known for its white, fragile perfection. In my works this porcelain perfection is challenged by a semi-controllable process of foaming glazes, which gives a richness of texture and colour.
When testing glazes, I always have my eye on the way the glaze interacts with the clay, focusing on the unpredictable things that can happen when two glazes meet. It's not like mixing blue and yellow and getting green. The interaction between glazes is like alchemy and may create something new and unique.
In the kiln, the glazes I use foam and burst in viscous bubbles. What rules here is heat, gravity and the properties of basic materials from the ground, which are magically transformed. When I switch off the heat, I maintain an impression of a process ruled by natural forces.
My aim is to give the impression of things we can recognise in nature – growth and decay, gravity, attraction and adaption. In this recognition there is an existential aspect. The processes that we may refer to as natural mimic our own way of being in the world.
