From Folk Art to Modern Design in Ceramics
Ethnographic Adventures in Denmark and Mexico 1975-1978 updated 2010
by
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Indeed, this may seem a tangled knot with many entwined threads. To untangle them, we need to thread our way back to the beginning. To explain the origins of this book, and its emergence into print, the authors need to take you back in time more than three decades. It was December,1974, we were spending our second winter-break in Mexico but this time with a purpose other than a romantic holiday. What intrigued us in that winter were the similarities between the work of potters in Mexico and ceramists in Denmark whose work we had appreciated during long summers in Denmark doing research on other subjects of separate interest. It occurred to the anthropologist side of the team than it would be interesting, unique, and perhaps important, to do a comparative study of these two cultures focusing on the fate of folk art traditions in the face of industrial forces and a shift to modern designs. Thus began a four year study that absorbed our energy and time. We conducted interviews and observations in workshops, studios, factory settings, stores, and in many cases in the homes of the artists/ceramists/potters who were the subjects of the study. The core of the manuscript was by 1979, but was put aside because of other more pressing demands. Abandoned for three decades it was rediscovered in 2010 and brought to light. The stories of intrigue, family quarrels, theft, and drunkenness along with amazing talent arising in surprising places, experimentation, innovation, imagination, determination and other human experiences confronted by social and technological changes were described for both societies. The study was not about art, but about the expression of human minds as individuals in both settings tried to blaze new paths in their craft while also trying to make merchandise to sell. They were craftspeople and artists creating a life while trying to make a living. In trying to discover what has happened over time, and whether or not our predictions were fulfilled, we investigated the fate of individuals we interviewed long ago, and like sleuths we found information about the fate of ceramic and porcelain factories we had studied. As we uncovered bits and pieces of information, several surprises confronted us. Factories we had expected to survive had failed; some operations we thought were fragile are now not only surviving, but are thriving. In this study, the communities of ceramists and the individual artists are viewed in a unique cross-cultural perspective. Their common problems are exposed; their contextual differences compared and appreciated. Their life patterns, in a thirty-year retrospective, show the influences of fate, fortune, and in many instances brilliant talent, with patient persistence and fluid flexibility. We have taken the position of social scientists and academics, not novelists, as we weave these stories together in a theory of paradigm change. What was documented then is now history, even though the narrative is in the present tense. . All readers will find elements of interest or intrigue, and will be informed in new ways about the old ways of changing dirt into dishes — clay to porcelain—and tradition into art.
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About the Book
From the dusty workshops of village potters to the pristine assembly lines of modern factories; from the makers of pottery to the producers of porcelain in selected areas of Mexico and Denmark, the authors observed, interviewed, and photographed ceramic artists at their work. The result is a story of persistence, inspiration, collaboration and intrigue, success and failure, along with individual eccentricities in the process of making ceramic art for an international market. The story is not only that of the potter’s wheel, but of the wheel of time over which the lowly village potter evolves as professional artist who eventually, in some instances, rejects making corporate porcelain in favor of returning to clay and kiln. The Mexican communities are near Guadalajara. The Danish settings include the towns of Naestved, Sørring, the island of Bornholm and, in Copenhagen, the porcelain giants Royal Copenhagen and Bing and Grøndahl contrasting large scale corporations with small pottery factories. Researched in the 1970s, the abandoned manuscript, recently rediscovered, appears here as written then with current material added to inform and update the historical ethnography, providing a rare opportunity to follow up on people and predictions, after thirty years, to identify change, decay and fulfillment.
About the Author
Robert Anderson, PhD, MD, is professor of anthropology at Mills College in Oakland, California. He has studied in Denmark and Mexico and is fluent in both languages. He was among the fi rst to transfer ethnographic skills from remote tribal villages to modern urban societies.
Edna Mitchell, PhD, professor emerita of education at Mills College, is a specialist in issues related to women, children and families has worked in Hungary, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, and Afghanistan. Anderson and Mitchell are married, live in San Leandro, California and enjoy a combined family of six children and eleven grandchildren.