This high-fired earthenware vase is decorated using terra sigillata, a watery refined slip that can also be brushed onto the clay. Stair had begun experimenting with this technique as an alternative to using a needle to scratch through the clay slip, as part of his early investigation of the relationship between form and surface in pottery during the early 1980s.

Stair’s use of red earthenware was a move away from porcelain, in a further determination to be more expansive in his practice. This piece also demonstrates the beginning of an increasing scale in his work. The lines of decoration respond to the shape of the vessel and reinforce the sense of upthrust movement in the open flare of the vase. The narrowing and widening intervals between the blue banding against the white ground also evoke the throwing technique used to create it. Stair has remarked that he was referencing Bronze Age and Mediterranean ceramics at this time. [1]

Julian Stair is one of the UK’s leading ceramic artists, creating works of art on both a monumental and intimate scale. Stair has become a leading historian of English Studio Ceramics, completing a PhD at the Royal College of Art, researching the critical origins of English Studio Pottery.

Katharine Malcolm, September 2020

[1] John M. Anderson Endowed Lecture Series: ‘A Sense of Place’, The Pennsylvania State University, 18 February 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTyzNba2KL4 [Accessed 14.09.20]