Chatsworth

a sounding line

Chatsworth is full of porcelain. Porcelain rests in vitrines and on desks, on mantelpieces and corbels, within fireplaces, on dining tables and stretching up to the ceiling in the porcelain room. There are formal garnitures and groupings, dinner services and wayward accretions, beautiful singletons and impressive masses: porcelain is as much a part of the texture of the place as the pictures and furniture. This new commission a sounding line came out of conversations with the Duke and Duchess to bring an illustration of my porcelain into Chatsworth. Installation is open "art - word speak" for a sculptural grouping of work: it seemed crucial to find a way of resonating with the historic collections in a strong but sympathetic way.

The Chapel Corridor with it's paring of fireplaces and high corbels - and its softly modulated light - was the setting chosen. I've always wanted to make a piece that you walked along, where variations in forms and colours and tones reveal themselves as you moved and this is what I have tried to do. The feeling that I had was one of music echoing through the house - sounding and resounding. So the two mantelpieces and the high corbels have groups of - 4 vessels that are loose "musical" reflections of each other. These vessels are glazed in a spectrum of different glazes based on the celadon glazes of the Far East. Within the chimneypieces are two groups of very large white and cream - glazed lidded jars with touches of gilding, echoes of the formal 18th century groupings of jars far away in the State Rooms. For I hope that a sounding line acts as a very personal and very particular reflection on Chatsworth's porcelain. - download pdf file