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©Gareth Sambidge
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Loraine Rutt

  • Ceramicist
  • London, United Kingdom
  • Master Artisan
Loraine Rutt Ceramicist
©Taran Wilkhu

A world of ceramics and cartography

  • • Loraine is a London based globe-making ceramicist
  • • Her specialty is creating clay globes
  • • She puts focus on our impact on the planet

Loraine Rutt is a ceramicist specialising in cartography. Her creations are globes and maps of all shapes and sizes made from clay. Loraine became an apprentice cartographer at the age of 16 and worked for eight years at London University, drawing maps for research papers and teaching aids. She gained an understanding of maps that set her up for the rest of her professional life. She then went on to study ceramics at Central Saint Martins and has been practising ceramics professionally since 1989 in her studio. Loraine makes pocket globes from the abundant resource that is clay. In her creations she draws attention to the impact that humans have on the planet. Each tiny globe is a tangible reminder of how we interact with Earth, in a form that suggests the familiarity of holding a pebble in one's hand.

Read the full interview

Works

  • ©Sylvain Deleu
  • ©Ian Skelton
  • ©Sylvain Deleu
  • ©Sylvain Deleu
  • ©Sylvain Deleu
Photo: ©Sylvain Deleu
Portal: global communication satellite map

This blue porcelain globe with white raised relief is at a scale of 1:238000000. It is mounted at the centre of a circular black ceramic 'portal’. The black dish wall relief is inlaid with a white porcelain map of global communication satellites.

Photo: ©Ian Skelton
Land and sea globe and pocket case

This is a pocket globe with scribed grid and coastlines, and raised relief painted with polychrome ceramic oxides. The scale is 1:170000000. The English Oak Pocket Case is a hinged pair of turned hemispheres, lined with a lacquered hand-painted celestial chart.

Photo: ©Sylvain Deleu
Supper plate after Molyneux

This is a press mould from a cast of a 17th century London pewter plate. It is scribed and inlaid with a hand drawn extract of the 16th century trade route from the UK to West Africa from a detail of Molyneux’s 1592 globe. It is embossed with the contemporary commodity code for sugar.

Photo: ©Sylvain Deleu
Poles Apart: Arctic

This is a ceramic roundel focused on the top 30° of the globe. Slip-cast in blue porcelain it has a white porcelain raised relief. The map is from a ‘Sprig’ mould modelled by hand to a horizontal scale of 1:26000000, and vertical scale of 1:500000.

Photo: ©Sylvain Deleu
Fuller’s Earth

This is a hand-built deconstructed ceramic globe, which is a map in the form of Fuller’s Dymaxion projection. This shows Earth’s landmass as one island. The map detail is to scale, painted with polychrome oxides and inlay longitude and coastlines.

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