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Lot Essay
Executed in 2006, Last Things is an installation piece made by Edmund de Waal that comprises fifty-nine cylindrical ceramic vessels of different heights and sizes arranged close to one another on a dark horizontal steel plate. The colours of these cylindrical vessels span six different shades of celadon and grey glaze and together articulate a lyrical and almost musical sense of form and rhythm.
Edmund de Waal is an artist who describes himself as both ‘writer and maker’ and who works in a way that allows one discipline to fuel and feed into the other. As an internationally-renowned artist, ceramicist, and potter, his work has played a major role in breaking down the boundaries between all these supposedly separate disciplines. Yet, he is
equally well known as the author of the international bestseller The Hare with the Amber Eyes – a poignant telling of his own family history through some of the objects they owned and collected.
As in this novel, the object also takes a position of primacy in de Waal’s artistic practice. Taking as its central motif the physical form of a skilfully handcrafted porcelain or ceramic vessel (made in the Japanese tradition under which de Waal originally studied), de Waal’s practice is founded upon the idea of the object as both a material manifestation and a narrative articulation of the fundamental elements of space, time, touch and memory. Each of his skilfully hand-crafted vessels usually bears an impression, in the form of a dent or an imprint, of de Waal’s hands and thereby reflects - through its near-perfect but always uniquely irregular shape - a sense of both the time and of the touch that went into its making. Each pot stands therefore as a separate and uniquely crafted moment in time – an object that has materialised amidst space and which, like words on a page, de Waal, then often lays out, like a script, in a sequence of horizontal lines to be ‘read’ by the viewer.
Through a progressive sequence of different vessels punctuating space in this linear-form of sequencing, each of de Waal’s objects asserts itself as a unique personality within a serial collective of objects that, through the gentle rhythms of their form, the space between them and the subtle variations of their colour, is intended, Giorgio Morandi-like, to lead the viewer towards a slow meditative form of contemplation. As with Morandi too, it is often the space between de Waal’s objects as much as the objects themselves that distinguishes these works and brings them to life.
In addition to emulating passages of writing or script, the repetitive, linear seriality of de Waal’s near-monochrome ceramics carries with it echoes of the formal language of American Minimalism. De Waal’s adoption of a similar austerity and sequencing however originates more from Zen-like approach to his work. The innate lyricism of de Waal’s serial ‘progressions’ for example, is something that owes more to the art of Americans like John Cage than it does to that of Sol LeWitt or Donald Judd.
As narrative structures, de Waal’s linear sequences, when presented as they often are, on shelves in vitrines, also address ideas about collections and collecting. Alternately, however, when viewed on singular shelves in space, as in Last Things of 2006 - a work that also directly encourages a view from above - the sequence of differently-scaled hollow, circular forms that the work presents also invokes the idea of the pot as a vessel or container. Echoing the Soffi of Guiseppe Penone for example, (or indeed, the poetry of Stephane Mallarmé and Paul Celan), this sequence of hollow forms can also be read as a meditational sequence of separate, individual breaths.
It is within this context that the forms of a work such as Last Things can also be seen to associate with sound as well as resonance. Not only does de Waal often speak of the unique but often overlooked,‘bird-song-like’ sound of porcelain, for instance, but here, like the tubes of a pipe organ or the wine glasses in a glass harp, the undulating, sequential visual rhythm of cylindrical forms established by de Waal’s placement of differently-scaled and differently-coloured vessels on a steel shelf also conjure a fugue-like sense of sound and music. And it was indeed this aspect of this work that prompted Jorunn Veiteberg to write about this work when it was exhibited at the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge in 2007 that: ‘like The Sounding Line, a work made for the chapel corridor at Chatsworth…[which] captures the feeling of music echoing through the house sounding and resounding, [the] rhythms found in de Waal’s work can be slow and smooth or they can be dynamic and pulsating as in ... Last Things from 2006. ... [It is] a piece that links to both the conventions of ceramics and craft and to sculpture and fine art. The New Art Centre in Roche Court, a venue concerned with contemporary sculpture, incorporated this installation into the exhibition Still Life, thereby emphasising precisely this bridge-building function as a central aspect of de Waal’s art’ (J. Veiteberg, Edmund de Waal at Kettle’s Yard exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, 2007, p. 21).
We are grateful to Edmund de Waal's studio for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Edmund de Waal is an artist who describes himself as both ‘writer and maker’ and who works in a way that allows one discipline to fuel and feed into the other. As an internationally-renowned artist, ceramicist, and potter, his work has played a major role in breaking down the boundaries between all these supposedly separate disciplines. Yet, he is
equally well known as the author of the international bestseller The Hare with the Amber Eyes – a poignant telling of his own family history through some of the objects they owned and collected.
As in this novel, the object also takes a position of primacy in de Waal’s artistic practice. Taking as its central motif the physical form of a skilfully handcrafted porcelain or ceramic vessel (made in the Japanese tradition under which de Waal originally studied), de Waal’s practice is founded upon the idea of the object as both a material manifestation and a narrative articulation of the fundamental elements of space, time, touch and memory. Each of his skilfully hand-crafted vessels usually bears an impression, in the form of a dent or an imprint, of de Waal’s hands and thereby reflects - through its near-perfect but always uniquely irregular shape - a sense of both the time and of the touch that went into its making. Each pot stands therefore as a separate and uniquely crafted moment in time – an object that has materialised amidst space and which, like words on a page, de Waal, then often lays out, like a script, in a sequence of horizontal lines to be ‘read’ by the viewer.
Through a progressive sequence of different vessels punctuating space in this linear-form of sequencing, each of de Waal’s objects asserts itself as a unique personality within a serial collective of objects that, through the gentle rhythms of their form, the space between them and the subtle variations of their colour, is intended, Giorgio Morandi-like, to lead the viewer towards a slow meditative form of contemplation. As with Morandi too, it is often the space between de Waal’s objects as much as the objects themselves that distinguishes these works and brings them to life.
In addition to emulating passages of writing or script, the repetitive, linear seriality of de Waal’s near-monochrome ceramics carries with it echoes of the formal language of American Minimalism. De Waal’s adoption of a similar austerity and sequencing however originates more from Zen-like approach to his work. The innate lyricism of de Waal’s serial ‘progressions’ for example, is something that owes more to the art of Americans like John Cage than it does to that of Sol LeWitt or Donald Judd.
As narrative structures, de Waal’s linear sequences, when presented as they often are, on shelves in vitrines, also address ideas about collections and collecting. Alternately, however, when viewed on singular shelves in space, as in Last Things of 2006 - a work that also directly encourages a view from above - the sequence of differently-scaled hollow, circular forms that the work presents also invokes the idea of the pot as a vessel or container. Echoing the Soffi of Guiseppe Penone for example, (or indeed, the poetry of Stephane Mallarmé and Paul Celan), this sequence of hollow forms can also be read as a meditational sequence of separate, individual breaths.
It is within this context that the forms of a work such as Last Things can also be seen to associate with sound as well as resonance. Not only does de Waal often speak of the unique but often overlooked,‘bird-song-like’ sound of porcelain, for instance, but here, like the tubes of a pipe organ or the wine glasses in a glass harp, the undulating, sequential visual rhythm of cylindrical forms established by de Waal’s placement of differently-scaled and differently-coloured vessels on a steel shelf also conjure a fugue-like sense of sound and music. And it was indeed this aspect of this work that prompted Jorunn Veiteberg to write about this work when it was exhibited at the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge in 2007 that: ‘like The Sounding Line, a work made for the chapel corridor at Chatsworth…[which] captures the feeling of music echoing through the house sounding and resounding, [the] rhythms found in de Waal’s work can be slow and smooth or they can be dynamic and pulsating as in ... Last Things from 2006. ... [It is] a piece that links to both the conventions of ceramics and craft and to sculpture and fine art. The New Art Centre in Roche Court, a venue concerned with contemporary sculpture, incorporated this installation into the exhibition Still Life, thereby emphasising precisely this bridge-building function as a central aspect of de Waal’s art’ (J. Veiteberg, Edmund de Waal at Kettle’s Yard exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, 2007, p. 21).
We are grateful to Edmund de Waal's studio for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.