K498

Despite the Modernist asperity of its title, K498 is an intricate assemblage. It includes twenty-seven variously-sized thrown porcelain pots, each glazed in celadon and gilded in gold leaf, which are held within three aluminum-framed glass vitrines, which are themselves placed upon Perspex plinths. Each of these sections is colored black: a distinct rarity for an artist, who is more usually associated with using white. Although Edmund de Waal is primarily known for his vessels, every component is integral to the overall work. “In my vitrines,” de Waal has written, “objects move between profile and dimensionality, blur into a haze and come suddenly into focus. Which is how memory works” (E. De Waal, "Lists,” in De Waal et al, Edmund de Waal, London, 2014, p. 210). 

De Waal became devoted to ceramics after encountering a Chinese pot at the age of 5. Although trained in stoneware, he has spent his mature career working in porcelain, which he considers “an inscrutable material, in the sense that it comes from earth but seems to aspire to something else. It seems closer to glass–closer to air–than the earth” (E. de Waal, quoted in Alastair Sooke, “Edmund de Waal: potter, writer, alchemist,” Daily Telegraph, 09.22.2015). His exquisite craftsmanship is supplemented with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, stretching from Song Dynasty pottery to Bauhaus design, through Conceptual art and contemporary poetry–an intellectualism demonstrated at full flourish in his award-winning memoir The Hare with the Amber Eyes (2010) and history of porcelain The White Road (2015).