Monumental Jar VIII commands a significant physical presence. It is an outstanding example of a blue brick vessel from Julian Stair’s celebrated exhibition, Quietus: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body (2012-14). The title refers to a final moment, a finishing point. Featuring cinerary jars and life size sarcophagi, the exhibition was the culmination of ten years’ work exploring the containment of the human body after death. Commissioned by Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), Quietus toured across the UK (National Museum of Wales Cardiff, Winchester Cathedral and Somerset House, London), and assumed very different forms in its various venues. [1]

Stair offers an artistic rather than a religious response to practices surrounding death: ‘There is something about clay that is elemental. Many creation myths refer to the forming of man from clay; it’s the stuff of the world that we live in, it’s what we walk on. Taking that material which symbolises our origins, and then making vessels to house the body to take it back into the ground, creates a wonderful kind of circularity.’ [2]

The scale of Stair’s monumental works required them to be made at three different brick factories (whilst on a residency), using industrial kilns for the firing process. Stair states, ‘There’s an alchemy to making ceramics. We take an inert material, fashion it, dry it and expose it to heat and flame. The practice of cremation, of exposing the body to fire, going through an alchemical change, echoes and parallels the process of firing.’ [3]

The formation of small spiral crusts of clay (that look like metal burr) along the horizontal ridges of the jar serve to emphasize the technical process of the vessel’s creation. They provide tactile focal points in contrast to the otherwise hard, raw, granular surface of the Etruria marl clay.

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