Warlow Mires Pots and Food Festival, 15th/16th September
I shall be exhibiting new pots in Derbyshire the weekend after next, Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th September 2012, at a brand new festival being run by Pat and Geoff Fuller in the village of Wardlow Mires which also boasts their legendary pub The Three Stags’ Heads. For further information, the festival has it’s own website. This is right up my street, the idea of combining potters with food producers is a great one and I’m very much looking forward to the event, not to mention a jar or two of ale in the Stags’! David Whiting has written a preview, which is well worth a read….
“Pat and Geoff Fuller’s pots and food festival is really timely, and to be warmly welcomed. In our current gallery and exhibition culture we seem to have forgotten that pots traditionally belong on the table, an enrichment for our food and the ceremonies of eating and drinking. They don’t belong behind glass, entombed ( didn’t Takeshi Yasuda once talk about ‘corpses’ ? ), but living in the dining room and kitchen, as they were meant to do. Pots are about interaction, between user and object, between diners at the table, between the plate and the feast it serves. And the concept of ‘feast’ is central here, a feast for the eyes, a feast for the mouth. Let’s not get too precious. Potters, if they regard themselves as TRUE functional potters, should always make mugs and jugs and plates, and not get distracted by notions that they are only artists now, too good for the utilitarian. They ignore their roots at their peril. And I can think of many potters whose work has lost vitality and life, because in their pursuit of market-friendly ‘individual’ work, their tablewares have been forsaken. This is very sad. Initiatives like the Fullers’ will help redress the balance, reminding us that pots, of course, offer the most wonderful frame for food. Doesn’t a roast chicken or a lasagna actually taste BETTER because of what it is presented on ?
Naturally, exhibitions will always be an important stage for the best that clay has to offer, but events that put pottery back into its real context need to become an increasingly important feature, not only of how we sell ceramics, but how we sell our food. Some of our finest potters and producers will be showing here at Wardlow Mires; a celebratory realisation of Pat and Geoff Fuller’s commitment to superb food and the pots which enhance it.”
David Whiting
Sept 2012