This unglazed porcelain Nerikomi bowl is hand built and smoke-fired. The source of inspiration is the human head, the crucible of our dreams. Barbara’s pieces are very much influenced by her South African upbringing: she is drawn to irregular repetition, primitive mark making and soft, earthy colours. The pattern is the product of the tensions between natural perfection and chaos.
Length 16 cm
Width 14 cm
Height 16 cm
©Layton Thompson
©Layton Thompson
©Layton Thompson
©Layton Thompson
©Barbara Gittings
Barbara Gittings
- Ceramicist
- Hove, United Kingdom
- Master Artisan
Contact
English, French
Hours:
By appointment only
By appointment only
Phone:
+44 7801493452
+44 7801493452
©Barbara Gittings
Capturing perfect imperfection
- • Barbara has mastered the Nerikomi technique
- • Ceramics is her second career
- • She’s inspired by the geometry of nature
After a long and successful career on the international stage in the fashion industry, from South Africa to the UK, Barbara Gittings was attracted to ceramics. She began to explore clay as an alternative medium to fabric. When she discovered the ancient Nerikomi technique she fell completely in love with it. Her work in ceramics somehow continues to search how layering and cutting merge to find new balances and forms. Nerikomi is a marbling method which involves staining the clay and then layering different colours, slicing and re-joining numerous times to put patterns through the clay. In her Brighton studio, Barbara works on the multi-layered effects nature creates, while trying “to embrace the accidental”. “My work is quiet, contemplative and tactile. The more one looks, the more one sees.”
Read the full interviewWorks
Photo: ©Barbara Gittings
Head bowl, number 40
Photo: ©Barbara Gittings
Floating bowl, number 6
Inspired by a milliner's hat block, this Nerikomi Bowl is unglazed and smoke-fired. The perfect beauty and geometry of the patterns found in the natural world are a constant source of inspiration, particularly the way random forces push the initial symmetric perfection towards asymmetry is fascinating.
Length 28 cm
Width 28 cm
Height 16 cm
Photo: ©Barbara Gittings
Large sculptural bowl
This large Nerikomi Sculptural Bowl is slab built. It is unglazed and smoke-fired. Barbara’s inspiration is drawn from the geometry of patterns in nature, laying down of strata and symmetry sliding into asymmetry. This is part of a never-ending, obsessive exploration of the balance between symmetry and asymmetry.
Length 35 cm
Width 24 cm
Height 30 cm
Photo: ©Barbara Gittings
Large bowl, number 1
This large, semi-circular Nerikomi bowl is press-moulded. It is bisque fired to 1040℃, it's smoke-fired and waxed. Barbara’s sculptural porcelain vessels explore the multi-layered effects nature creates via the laying down of strata, weathering and erosion, putting patterns through the clay thanks to the Nerikomi techniques.
Height 15 cm
Diameter 29 cm
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