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{{Short description|Australian artist (1935–2013)}} |
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Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (born 1935, Ballarat, Australia) is a contemporary ceramic artist. With a career spanning over 45 years, influences from her early apprenticeships with English potters Ray Finch, Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach are still apparent in her current work. Hanssen Pigott wood-fires her porcelain still-life arrangements that are noticeably influenced by the still life work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.<ref>Garth Clark Gallery: http://www.garthclark.com/artists/artists.php?id=Hanssen%20Pigott</ref> Her palette is clearly inherited from China’s Song Dynasty wares introduced to her through her various apprenticeships in the Leach tradition. Hanssen Pigott currently maintains a studio in Ipswich, Queensland where she is recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. |
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{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}} |
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{{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}} |
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{{Infobox artist |
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| name = Gwyn Hanssen Pigott |
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| image = Photo of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott.jpg |
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| imagesize = |
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| caption = Gwyn Hanssen Pigott in 1961 |
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| birth_name = Gwynion Lawrie John |
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| birth_date = {{birth date|1935|01|01|mf=y}} |
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| birth_place = [[Ballarat]], [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]] |
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| death_date = {{death date and age|2013|7|5|1935|01|01|mf=y}} |
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| death_place = [[London]], England |
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| nationality = Australian |
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| education = [[University of Melbourne]] |
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| field = [[pottery|potter]] |
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| training = |
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| movement = |
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| works = |
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| patrons = |
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| awards = Medal of the [[Order of Australia]] (OAM) {{small|(2002)}}<br />[[Australia Council]] Fellowship Award {{small|(1998)}}<br />Fellow, [[Society of Designer Craftsmen]] {{small|(1963)}} |
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| spouse = Louis Hanssen (divorced) |
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}} |
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'''Gwyn Hanssen Pigott''' OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian [[ceramic artist]]. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists.<ref name=smh /> By the time she died she was regarded as "one of the world's greatest contemporary potters".<ref name="Harrod">"The still lives of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott" in {{cite book|last1=Harrod|first1=Tanya|title=The real thing|date=2015|publisher=Hyphen Press|location=London|isbn=978-0-907259-50-3|pages=283–7}}</ref> She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the US, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. But in the 1980s she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter [[Giorgio Morandi]].<ref name="Harrod" /> |
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== |
== Early years 1935–1955 == |
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Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was born Gwynion Lawrie John on 1 January 1935 in [[Ballarat]], Australia.<ref name="Harrod" /> She was the second of four daughters. Her father was director of an engineering firm and her mother an eclectic arts and crafts teacher–practitioner who surrounded her children with craft objects she had made.<ref name="Autobiographical">{{cite journal|last1=Hanssen Pigott|first1=Gwyn|title=Autobiographical Notes|journal=Studio Potter|date=1991|volume=20|issue=1|url=https://www.studiopotter.org/autobiographical-notes|access-date=30 October 2016}}</ref> |
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In 1954, she received her [[Bachelor of Arts]] from the [[University of Melbourne]]. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to [[ceramic art|ceramics]] was in the 1950s while a university student, taken with the Kent Collection of Chinese and Korean wares at the [[National Gallery of Victoria]].<ref name="WACeramicArts" /> Excited by [[Bernard Leach]]'s ''A Potter's Book'',<ref>Leach, Philip, "The Leach Legacy" in {{cite book|last1=Leach|first1=Bernard|title=A Potter's Book|date=2015|publisher=Unicorn|location=Chicago|isbn=978-1-910065-16-7}}</ref> she researched pottery in Australia for her honours thesis. She discovered and was enthralled by [[Ivan McMeekin]], who had been apprenticed to both [[Bernard Leach]] and [[Michael Cardew]] in England.<ref name="Autobiographical" /> She abandoned her honours year and started an apprenticeship with McMeekin.<ref name="Autobiographical" /> |
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== Apprenticeships 1955–1966 == |
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In 1954, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott received her Bachelor of Arts (equivalent to a Bachelor of Fine Arts) from the University of Melbourne. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to ceramics was in the 1950s while a student at University. She studied Bernard Leach's A Potter's Book, an influential text for potters both when it was written as well as today. In seeking to learn more in the Leach tradition, she sought out Ivan McMeekin who had apprenticed with both Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew in England. |
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Between 1955 and 1959, Hanssen Pigott, as Gwyn John, held apprenticeships with several influential potters from both Australia and England. Her apprenticeship with McMeekin was at Sturt Pottery<ref name="Cochrane">{{cite web|last1=Cochrane|first1=Grace|title=70 Year at Sturt (1941–2011)— pottery|url=http://sturt.blackroom.com.au/about/pottery|website=Sturt – Australian Contemporary Craft and Design|access-date=26 October 2016}}</ref> in Mittagong, New South Wales 1955–1957. McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in 1953 to make and teach [[pottery]] in the studio traditions of [[Bernard Leach|Leach]] and [[Michael Cardew|Cardew]], which emphasized the use of local materials for small-scale studio production.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sturt | School of excellence in arts, design and fabrication|url=https://www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/|access-date=2021-09-06|website=www.sturt.nsw.edu.au|language=en-US}}</ref> At that time all clay bodies had to be made from hand-processed raw [[ceramic materials]], as they were not available as commercially pre-mixed products. While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott came to appreciate the given and induced qualities of clay in addition to learning to admire form and beauty in a pot.<ref name="Rye">{{cite web|last1=Rye|first1=Owen|title=Gwynn Hanssen Pigott: a Fifty Year Survey|url=http://www.owenrye.com/articles/2005%20Gwyn%20Hanssen%20PigottA.html|website=Owen Rye Woodfired ceramics|access-date=26 October 2016}}</ref><ref name="WACeramicArts">{{cite web|title=Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (nee John) 1935–2013|url=http://www.ceramicartswa.asn.au/news/gwyn-hanssen-pigott-nee-john-1935-2013|website=Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia|date=2016|access-date=28 October 2016}}</ref> |
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Hanssen Pigott traveled to England in 1958. She first worked with [[Ray Finch]] at [[Winchcombe Pottery]], established by Michael Cardew in 1926. In the same year she apprenticed Bernard Leach at St Ives, and Michael Cardew himself at [[Wenford Bridge]]. In 1960 she left Cornwall with her newlywed poet husband, Louis Hanssen to establish with him a studio in Portobello Road, London.<ref name=Pascoe>{{Citation | author1=Pascoe, Joseph | author2=Museo internazionale delle ceramiche (Faenza, Italy) | author3=Concorso internazionale della ceramica d'arte (49th : 1995 : Faenza, Italy) | title=Delinquent angel : Australian historical, Aboriginal and contemporary ceramics | year=1995 | publication-date=1995 | publisher=Centro Di | isbn=978-88-7038-272-3 }}</ref> During their time in London, Hanssen Pigott (as Gwyn Hanssen) enrolled in evening classes at the [[Camberwell School of Art]] with [[Lucie Rie]]. Her work at this time was sometimes marked GH, sometimes simply H.<ref name="Marks">{{cite news|last1=Pearce|first1=Judith|title=Identifying Australian Pottery 1960s to Date|url=https://www.flickr.com/groups/austpots/discuss/72157632376907979/|website=flickr|access-date=30 October 2016}}</ref> She separated from Louis Hanssen in 1965.<ref name="WACeramicArts" /> |
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Between 1955 and 1959, Hanssen Pigott held apprenticeships with several influential potters from both Australia and England. Her first apprenticeship was with McMeekin at Sturt Pottery in Mittagong, New South Wales, Australia, between 1955 and 1957. McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in 1953 as a production and teaching pottery modeled after the studio traditions of Leach and Cardew. McMeekin emphasized the use of local materials for small-scale studio production, a concept introduced to him by Cardew.<ref>Sturt Contemporary Australian Craft: http://www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/index.htm</ref> Hanssen Pigott studied with McMeekin at a time when all clay bodies had to be made from hand-processed raw ceramic materials, they were not available as commercially pre-mixed products. While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott was exposed to an appreciation of materiality and process in addition to a learned admiration of form and beauty in a pot.<ref>Rye, Owen; Gwyn Hanssen Pigott A Fifty Year Survey; Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 62 2005</ref> |
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== Functional pottery 1966–1973 == |
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Hanssen Pigott’s introduction to the Leach-Cardew studio potter tradition via McMeekin more than likely encouraged her to go abroad to England to apprentice with Finch, Cardew and Leach. Hanssen Pigott traveled to England in 1958. She first worked with Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery. Michael Cardew established Winchcombe in 1926 by shortly after he left St. Ives where he had been an apprentice to Bernard Leach for three years. Cardew’s goal was to make pottery for everyday use and to make his pottery available at a price that most people could afford (in the seventeenth century English slipware tradition).<ref>Winchcombe Pottery: http://www.winchcombepottery.co.uk/history.html</ref> In 1939, only three years after joining Cardew, Ray Finch assumed the management of Winchcombe while Cardew set up a new pottery in Cornwall at Wenford Bridge. In 1946, Cardew sold Winchcombe to Ray Finch.<ref>Pottery Studio: http://www.studiopottery.com/cgi-bin/mp.cgi?item=100</ref> |
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In 1966, after several visits, she moved to [[Achères, Cher|Achères, France]] where she bought a small house and set up her own pottery studio. She maintained a wood-fired kiln and dug her own clay. Though the clay was "faultless" she began increasingly to use porcelain bodies made for porcelain factories at [[Vierzon]] nearby.<ref name="Autobiographical" /> "She never produced a standard line, published a catalogue or made a vase."<ref name="WACeramicArts" /> |
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In 1958, after working at Winchcombe, Hanssen Pigott apprenticed Bernard Leach at St Ives, and Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge. In 1960, she left Cornwall with her newlywed husband, Louis Hanssen, to establish a studio in Portobello Road, London.<ref>Editor Pascoe, Joseph; Delinquent Angel: Australian Historical, Aboriginal and Contemporary Ceramics; Catalogue © 1995 by Centro Di</ref> During her time in London, Hanssen Pigott enrolled in evening classes at the Camberwell School of Art, with Dame Lucie Rie. |
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:The domestic pot is considered to be an inferior object. For me there is no distinction between repeated and individual wares.<ref name="WACeramicArts" /> |
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In 1966, after several visits, she moved to Archeres, France where she set up her own pottery. Hanssen Pigott became more and more well known in the ceramics community internationally. Around this time she lectured in the United States as well as Holland. In 1973, she returned to Australia, moving to Tasmania in 1974 with her second husband John Pigott. Hanssen Pigott and her husband set up a pottery workshop in Tasmania with financial help from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council. |
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Her [[potter's mark]] remained an impressed monogram GH. This is the decade in which she is regarded as having made "some of the finest functional stoneware and porcelain of all time".<ref name="Harrod" /> Her work made her well known in the international ceramics community and she often taught in the United States and the Netherlands.<ref name="Harrod" /> This period was celebrated by a big show of her work at the British Craft Centre in London in 1971.<ref name="WACeramicArts" /> |
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Some of her many artistic accolades include the following: in 1980, Hanssen Pigott was a “tenant potter” in Adelaide at the Jam Factory Craft Center, from 1981-1988 she was the potter in residence at the Queensland University of Technology. In 1989 she was the artist in residence at the Fremantle Arts Center. In 1993 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council. In 1994 she was the artist in residence in the Ceramics Department of the School of Mines and Industries, Ballrat.<ref>Editor Pascoe, Joseph; Delinquent Angel: Australian Historical, Aboriginal and Contemporary Ceramics; Catalogue © 1995 by Centro Di</ref> |
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== Decorated pottery 1973–1983 == |
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In 1973, she returned to Australia, moving to Tasmania in 1974 and marrying her studio assistant John Pigott in 1976. Under the name Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, she and her husband set up a pottery workshop in Tasmania with financial help from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.<ref name="WACeramicArts" /> |
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:We raw-glazed and fired with wood, and John blended clays and minerals from the far reaches of the island into stoneware and porcelain bodies and decorating pigments. Our work showed a definite European peasant bias and our markets were mainly local.<ref name="Autobiographical" /> |
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== INFLUENCES == |
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In 1980 she separated from John Pigott. (She separated from each husband by moving away geographically but keeping his friendship and his surname.) She was a “tenant potter” that year in Adelaide at the Jam Factory Craft Centre. Having to "work with gas … I threw porcelain table settings, usually blue-grey or green [[celadon]] with a range of washed-out [[Shino ware|shino-type]] colours. And … I made a body of decorated work."<ref name="Autobiographical" /> She continued this work 1981–1989 as potter in residence at the [[Queensland University of Technology]]: gas-fired dinner settings, wood-fired pots decorated with tiny patterns of indigo, ultimately picked out in gold.<ref name="Autobiographical" /> |
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== Still-life pottery 1984–2013 == |
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Gwyn Hanssen Piggot’s work has a wide range of influences. The variety of influence from Song Dynasty glazes and palettes to Leach-Cardew forms can be clearly seen in her work. Hanssen Pigott has written about her interests in Buddhism and the meditation accompanying the practice as well as her interests in the quiet still-lives of Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi—all of which influence her work. |
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Hanssen Pigott returned to London for a show of her work at the Casson Gallery in 1984. Catching up with developments of the previous decade and reconnecting with her peers, she was overcome by a sense of "shallowness" and lack of "humanness" in her work.<ref name="Autobiographical" /><ref name="TruthinForm" /> Thus began the last and most famous period of her career. In this period she was based in country Queensland but showed her work especially through Garry Anderson (1956–1991) and his austere gallery in Sydney.<ref name="Autobiographical" /> From this time her potter's mark was an impressed O.<ref name="Marks" /> |
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In her earlier work, Hanssen Pigott focused on producing functional ceramic wares. But she is best known for her more recent objects: three dimensional still life groupings of wood-fired porcelain with names like ''The Listeners'' and ''Breath''—on which she worked from the 1980s. ''Caravan'', an installation at Tate St Ives in 2004, was fifty-five-feet long.<ref name="Harrod" /> The groupings were mainly though not entirely<ref name="Rye" /> inspired by the still-life paintings of the Italian [[Giorgio Morandi]].<ref name=WhitingObit>{{cite news|last1=Whiting|first1=David|title=Gwyn Hanssen Pigott obituary|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/11/gwyn-hanssen-pigott|access-date=19 January 2016|work=The Guardian|issue=12 July 2013}}</ref> She herself regarded the change as curious, a distancing from objects in themselves so personal and handy.<ref>Hanssen Pigott writes, "Thankfully there are masters I can look to, who never seemed to miss. The makers of the Korean rice bowls, Giorgio Morandi. Their works confront and inspire, and imply humility, unconscious or highly, intensely conscious, they express a sure understanding. Of something. What? Is that truth in form? Are their forms true? Well, they have left us some sort of man-made, material, tangible expression in real stuff, real clay, real thick paint, which in its pulled back simplicity satisfies a surprising longing. And because I can appreciate it (a little), or feel it, then that understanding must be in me too—as deeply as I allow it. And also, perhaps, the potential to express it. Worth pursuing, would not you say? But perhaps, after all, not to be spoken about too much. Words get too big. Leave them." ""Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". ''Studio Potter''. '''26''' (1): 5–8, 1997.</ref> |
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As previously discussed, Hanssen Pigott was influenced early on by the text A Potter’s Book, written by Bernard Leach. Artist and author Edmund de Waal describes A Potter’s Book: |
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"A Potter’s Book, finally published at the start of the war in May 1940, |
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stands as both manual and polemic. Indeed its significance and popularity are due to the complex way in which Leach’s technical descriptions are bound up in his values. It is a book that seems to encode the whole meaning of being a potter and working as a potter, not simply the making of pots. From his introductory chapter ‘Towards a Standard’, through the technical chapters to the description of an imagined month in the workshop life of a potter, Leach rehearses his convictions about the place of handwork in society…Leach starts from the presumption that there is a need for a common standard of ‘fitness and beauty’ and that such a standard is lacking in the West where the appreciation of pottery is a marginal activity…His judgments are expressed as absolutes: ‘a pot in order to be good should be a genuine expression of life,’ ‘it is true that pots exist which are useful and not beautiful and others that are beautiful and impractical, but neither of these extremes can be considered normal: the normal is a balanced combination of the two…(Leach states) The potter must be symbolically independent of contemporary society…The gravitas of Leach’s book, though, lay in the feeling that art was not various but very particular indeed. It was the very absoluteness of Leach’s ‘Song standards’, ‘the ethical pot’, that were to define the post-war agenda on ceramics."<ref>de Waal, Edmund; Bernard Leach St. Ives Artists; Tate Gallery Publishing ©1998</ref> |
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:I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach.<ref>In full: "I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach. To make beakers that are totally inviting and then to freeze them in an installation. Worse still, to take so much time with each piece, carefully trimming and turning and removing most marks of the throwing … Old friends indeed be worried. And yet it has come slowly, out of observation, out of what cannot be refuted. These forms, these assemblages and groupings and jostlings and juxtapositions sometimes have a power to move me, and others. Strange, I cannot understand." "Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". ''Studio Potter''. '''26''' (1): 5–8, 1997.</ref> |
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Through her study with McKeenin, Hanssen Pigott’s sense of the Leach tradition was sharpened. McMeekin set up the Sturt Craft Center based on Michael Cardew’s philosophy of self-sufficiency. McMeekin relied on local clays and raw materials to make his work. McMeekin wrote his own influential book published in 1967, titled Notes for Potters in Australia. Clearly Hanssen Pigott chose to learn more about Leach and his family of potters in her decision to apprentice with Leach, Cardew and Finch in the UK. De Waal’s description of Leach’s high regard for the aesthetic of China’s Song Dynasty wares, specifically the objects made for meditation in the monasteries, has been incredibly influential on Hanssen Pigott’s aesthetic.<ref>Cooper, Emmanuel; Ten thousand Years of Pottery, Fourth Edition; ©2000 Cooper</ref> |
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She hints in her ''Autobiographical Notes'' that this distancing was encouraged by seeing so much of country Queensland from the air as a teacher for the [[Australian Flying Arts School]].<ref name="Autobiographical" /> |
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The Song Dynasty wares, so influential to so many contemporary potters, are known for their simple glazing, soft colors, elegance, poise, restraint and peaceful qualities. Bernard Leach might be considered one of the most notable contemporary advocates for this aesthetic in the West. Chinese firing technology had become quite advanced during the Song Dynasty, allowing for the development of more sophisticated high temperature glazes. More important than decoration, the shapes of this dynasty became complex and engaging as the focus of the wares. Many potters made work with tradition in mind, aiming to recreate the look of jade stone in their glazes. |
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Prompted by her evocative titles, nearly all viewers endow the work of this period with symbolic or metaphoric meaning.<ref name="Bruhn">Seen at its best in {{cite web|last1=Bruhn|first1=Camerson|title=Gywn Hanssen Pigott|url=http://architectureau.com/articles/gwyn-hanssen-pigott/|website=ArchitectureAU|access-date=30 October 2016}}</ref> |
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In 1989 she was the artist in residence at the Fremantle Arts Centre.<ref name="Pascoe" /> Later that year she moved to [[Netherdale, Queensland|Netherdale]] in north Queensland. In 1993 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three-year Artist Development Fellowship by the Australia Council. In 1994 she was the artist in residence in the Ceramics Department of the School of Mines and Industries, Ballarat – her home town. In 2000 she set up a final pottery in [[Ipswich, Queensland|Ipswich]] in south-eastern Queensland.<ref name="Harrod" /> |
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In Hanssen Pigott’s pottery, you can see a heavy influence of specifically the Northern Song Dynasty wares. The Northern Song wares concentrated on the meditative qualities of form. Glazing was rich in color, but decoration on the surfaces was minimal. What decoration that was used was delicate and restrained. The work is technically very accomplished.<ref>Cooper, Emmanuel; Ten thousand Years of Pottery, Fourth Edition; ©2000 Cooper</ref> |
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In 2005, the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective exhibition ''Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey 1955–2005'' with a 112-page catalogue.<ref name="Smith">{{cite book|last1=Smith|first1=Jason|title=Gwyn Hanssen Pigott : a survey of works 1955–2005|date=2005|publisher=National Gallery of Victoria|location=Melbourne|isbn=0-7241-0264-7|pages=112}}</ref> |
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In addition to her adherence to the aesthetic of the Song Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of form, which is aligned with the Cardew Leach philosophy of the importance of the everyday and humility in pottery: |
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Gwyn Hanssen Pigott died on Friday 5 July 2013 in London, after suffering a stroke.<ref name=smh>{{cite web|author=Steve Dow |url=http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/gwyn-hanssen-pigott-potter-and-barrier-breaker-dies-in-london-20130707-2pjuu.html |title=Gwyn Hanssen Pigott dies |publisher=Smh.com.au |date= 7 July 2013|access-date=2013-07-08}}</ref> She had been arranging a show there.<ref name="Harrod" /> |
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"About form. I am sure that the forms of the most common, everyday utensils can evoke so much that is inexpressible in any other language, about humanness. That with only the very slightest gesture, the merest suggestion of the lip of a jug, or pouring spout, or the lightest softening of a curve, there can be expressed a sort of vulnerability, or a tenderness, or an attentiveness that causes us to pause. That the scale alone of some objects can touch us, and a small jug of open and generous form can somehow seem brave and absurd and a bit like ourselves."<ref>Hanssen Pigott, Gwyn; The Rightness of Form; Ceramic Review 207 May/June 2004</ref> |
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== Influences == |
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It is later on that Hanssen Pigott describes how her work differs from the aspirations of Leach and Cardew: |
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The variety of influence from [[Song Dynasty]] glazes and palettes to Leach–Cardew forms can be clearly seen in Hanssen Pigott's work. She has also written about her interest in the quiet still lifes of Italian painter, [[Giorgio Morandi]], which influenced her later work.<ref name="TruthinForm" /><ref name="Rye" /> |
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"I no longer care if the cup, with its careful handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of teaset making), stands unused among a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a still life, somewhere higher than table height. Aait is still a cup—an everyday object as ordinary and simple as can be—but from somewhere, because of its tense or tenuous relationship with other simple, recognized, even banal objects, pleasure comes. |
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=== Song Dynasty ware === |
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I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach. To make beakers that are totally inviting and then to freeze them in an installation. Worse still, to take so much time with each piece, carefully trimming and turning and removing most marks of the throwing….Old friends indeed be worried. And yet it has come slowly, out of observation, out of what cannot be refuted. These forms, these assemblages and groupings and jostlings and juxtapositions sometimes have a power to move me, and others. Strange, I cannot understand."<ref>Hanssen Pigott, Gwyn; The Rightness of Form; Ceramic Review 207 May/June 2004</ref> |
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The [[Northern Song]] wares concentrated on the meditative qualities of form. Glazing was rich in colour, but decoration on the surfaces was minimal. What decoration there was delicate and restrained. The work is technically very accomplished.<ref name="Cooper">{{cite book|last1=Cooper|first1=Emmanuel|title=Ten thousand years of pottery|date=2000|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|location=Philadelphia|isbn=978-0-8122-3554-8|edition=4th}}</ref> |
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Hanssen Piggot might have come to arranging her work in groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was not without influence. Hanssen Piggot describes her interests in the paintings of Italian Giorgio Morandi: |
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=== Leach and Cardew === |
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"Thankfully there are masters I can look to, who never seemed to miss. The makers of the Korean rice bowls, Giorgio Morandi. Their works confront and inspire, and imply humility, unconscious or highly, intensely conscious, they express a sure understanding. Of something. What? Is that truth in form? Are their forms true? Well, they have left us some sort of man-made, material, tangible expression in real stuff, real clay, real thick paint, which in its pulled back simplicity satisfies a suprising longing. And because I can appreciate it (a little), or feel it, then that understanding must be in me too—as deeply as I allow it. And also, perhaps, the potential to express it. Worth pursuing, would not you say? But perhaps, after all, not to be spoken about too much. Words get too big. Leave them."<ref>Hanssen Pigott, Gwyn; The Rightness of Form; Ceramic Review 207 May/June 2004</ref> |
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In addition to her adherence to the aesthetic of the Song Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of form, which is aligned with the Cardew–Leach philosophy of the importance of the everyday and of humility in pottery: |
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:About form. I am sure that the forms of the most common, everyday [[Tool|utensils]] can evoke so much that is inexpressible in any other language, about humanness.<ref>In full: "That with only the very slightest gesture, the merest suggestion of the lip of a jug, or pouring spout, or the lightest softening of a curve, there can be expressed a sort of vulnerability, or a tenderness, or an attentiveness that causes us to pause. That the scale alone of some objects can touch us, and a small jug of open and generous form can somehow seem brave and absurd and a bit like ourselves. "Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". ''Studio Potter''. '''26''' (1):5–8, 1997.</ref> |
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Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) started painting still life compositions in the 1920s. His style of painting was minimal in its use of composition, quiet colors and line quality. His colors often used whites, muted blues, browns, iron reds, cobalt and ochre creating a very specific palette.<ref>Rye, Owen; Gwyn Hanssen Pigott A Fifty Year Survey; Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 62 2005</ref> Author Karen Wilkin writes of Giorgio Morandi: |
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=== Giorgio Morandi === |
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"This is true even among the still lifes constructed of utterly familiar, repeated objects. In some, Morandi gangs those objects together so that they touch, hiding and cropping one another in ways that alter even the most recognizable features; in others, the same objects are treated as distinct individuals, gathered on the surface of the tabletop like an urban crowd in a piazza. In Morandi's closely linked "serial still lifes", apparently identical groupings of familiar objects, altered by the addition or subtraction of a single element, the presence (or absence) of one more bottle, one less box, as casually placed as an afterthought, can serve not only to completely shift the dynamic weight and the spatial logic of a given composition, but to change its color harmonies, and even the entire proportion of the picture."<ref>Wilkin, Karen; Giorgio Morandi; Rizzoli Publishing, New York, ©1997</ref> |
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Hanssen Piggot might have come to arranging her work in groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was definitely not without influences. Hanssen Piggot describes her interest in the paintings of Italian [[Giorgio Morandi]] in her essay ''Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity''.<ref name="TruthinForm" /> The still lifes of the English painter [[Ben Nicholson]] also played a part.<ref name="Bruhn" /> Hanssen Pigott describes how her work differs from the aspirations of Leach and Cardew: |
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:I no longer care if the cup, with its careful handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of tea set making), stands unused among a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a still life, somewhere higher than table height. It is still a cup—an everyday object as ordinary and simple as can be—but from somewhere, because of its tense or tenuous relationship with other simple, recognized, even banal objects, pleasure comes.<ref name="TruthinForm">{{cite journal|last1=Hanssen Pigott|first1=Gwyn|title=Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity|journal=Studio Potter|date=1997|volume=26|issue=1|url=https://www.studiopotter.org/north-carolina-potters-vol-26-no-1|access-date=30 October 2016}}</ref> |
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== |
== Collections == |
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Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found in the following collections. |
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=== Australian collections === |
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In her early work, in the 1950s through the 1970s, Hanssen Pigott focused on producing functional ceramic wares. She is most well known for her more recent objects--three dimensional still life groupings, which she has worked with closely since the 1980s. Her influences from the Song Dynasty wares show early as she was working with McMeekin in the 1950’s, who was also heavily influenced by the work from the Song Dynasty. This early engagement with the history of ceramics has proven to become an old friend for Hanssen Pigott in her later works. |
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[[Art Gallery of South Australia]], [[National Gallery of Australia]], [[National Gallery of Victoria]]. Provincial galleries in [[Art Gallery of Ballarat|Ballarat]], Bathurst, Bendigo, Cairns, Castlemaine, Darwin, Devonport, Federation University Australia; Geelong, Gippsland, Gladstone, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Launceston, [[Newcastle Art Gallery|Newcastle]], Orange, Shepparton, Stanthorpe and Townsville. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; University of New South Wales, Sydney; Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart. |
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=== International collections === |
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Owen Rye writes of Hanssen Pigott: |
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Canada: Winnipeg Museum; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; France: Fina Gomez Collection, Paris; Germany: Dr. Hans Thiemann Collection, Hamburg; Ireland: Belfast Museum, Northern Ireland; Japan: Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki; Netherlands: Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam; New Zealand: Auckland Museum; United Kingdom: Crafts Council of Great Britain, London; Henry Rothschild Collection, Shipley Art Gallery; Crafts Study Centre, Farnham; Regional Galleries Bristol, Maidstone, Manchester and Paisley; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; York Art Gallery; USA: Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin; Jack Lenor Larsen Collection; Los Angeles County Museum of Art.<ref name="Alcorso">{{cite web|title=GHP CV updated May 2011|url=http://www.alcorso.org.au/assets/_GHPCVMay2011.pdf|website=Alcorso Foundation|access-date=30 October 2016}}</ref> |
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== Honours == |
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"Had I come to Pigott’s work with knowledge of recent art history, and none at all of her journey, I might sat that her work is much more suggestive of the modernist movement than of its beginnings in a love for Song Dynasty ceramics; more redolent of Bauhaus Germany or later Scandinavia, than distant China…the group carries an alternating current, a constantly reversing flow from one polarity to another; from abstraction to reality… Early in the evolution of the group concept, Ian McKay, in 1990, discussed the inherent contradictions in the grouping that arose at that time from considering each item in the group as a functional object, for example, a bowl or cup for daily use. These functional pots if used and replaced would constantly modify the group. Or, if the group were retained in its original format, then quite usable objects could become solely objects of contemplation. In a prescient manner (the article was written just before his death) McKay suggested: "The still lifes should be thought about again, both by enthusiastic critics and the artist."<ref>Rye, Owen; Gwyn Hanssen Pigott A Fifty Year Survey; Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 62 2005</ref> |
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Her accolades include: |
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* 2002, Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), "for service to the arts as a ceramic artist and teacher of the craft."<ref>{{cite web|date=|title=Ms Gwyn Hanssen PIGOTT|url=https://honours.pmc.gov.au/honours/awards/1040867|access-date=2021-07-02|website=It's An Honour}}</ref> |
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In a 1999 review, Helen Stephens writes of Hanssen Pigott: |
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* 1998, Australia Council Fellowship 1998 Australia Council Fellowship Award. |
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* 1963, Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen, UK.<ref name="Alcorso" /> |
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== References == |
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"She (Hanssen Pigott) says in making her forms, she dared herself to go to the edge of formlessness and, she wrote: "To my delight the pared down forms remained pots; glazed, strong, usable. What is more, this eccentric presentation, unframed, unboxed, completely floating on an idea, was accepted." She says she is wary of design: "Skill is one thing but a pot has to breathe." These groups have a meditative value -- we take time out to consider them in the rush of life. People who purchase these groups of pots set aside alcoves, shelves, specially designed locations for these object groupings. Their strength and individuality; their cool composure; their certainty; their lightness and depth have the power to move and reassure. Pigott says they have, "for a moment pulled on our attention, with, perhaps, a reminder of our own vulnerability, and beauty and possibility of transformation and repose". The range of colours also have a powerful effect -- from pure white groupings to rich and intense browns that seem to glisten out of the darkness."<ref>Stephens, Helen; Simple Slam: A Ceramic Aesthetic; Ceramics no 38 100-2 1999</ref> |
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{{reflist}} |
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{{Authority control}} |
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Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found in the collections of: the Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Winnipeg Museum and numerous others. Her recent accolades include: 2001, Order of Australia Medal; 1998, Australia Council Fellowship Award; 1985, Queensland State Ceramic Award, Toowoomba; 1963, Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen, UK; and numerous others. |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pigott, Gwyn Hanssen}} |
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== ETERNAL LINKS == |
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[[Category:1935 births]] |
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[[Category:2013 deaths]] |
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Garth Clark Gallery: http://www.garthclark.com/artists/artists.php?id=Hanssen%20Pigott |
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[[Category:Australian potters]] |
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[[Category:Australian women ceramicists]] |
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Sturt Contemporary Australian Craft: http://www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/index.htm |
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[[Category:Australian ceramicists]] |
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[[Category:Federation University Australia]] |
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Galerie Besson: http://www.galeriebesson.co.uk/hanssen2exhib2.html |
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[[Category:People from Ballarat]] |
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[[Category:Women potters]] |
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Ceramics Today: http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/pigott.htm |
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[[Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia]] |
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[[Category:20th-century Australian artists]] |
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Smithsonian Freer Gallery of art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery: |
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http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/Parades.htm |
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Chritine Abrahams Gallery: http://www.christineabrahamsgallery.com.au/adisplay.cfm?id=74 |
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National Gallery of Victoria: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/hanssenpigott/ |
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The Leach Pottery: http://www.leachpottery.com/ |
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Wendford Bridge Pottery: http://www.wenfordbridge.com/ |
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Winchcombe Pottery: http://www.winchcombepottery.co.uk/history.html |
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Museuo Morandi: http://www.museomorandi.it/english/sec_pag.htm |
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Song Dynasty Wares: http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/ceramics/early-chinese-ceramics-sung.cfm |
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== REFERENCES == |
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<references/> |
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Latest revision as of 19:05, 20 November 2024
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott | |
|---|---|
 Gwyn Hanssen Pigott in 1961 | |
| Born | Gwynion Lawrie John January 1, 1935 |
| Died | July 5, 2013 (aged 78) London, England |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Known for | potter |
| Spouse | Louis Hanssen (divorced) |
| Awards | Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) (2002) Australia Council Fellowship Award (1998) Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen (1963) |
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists.[1] By the time she died she was regarded as "one of the world's greatest contemporary potters".[2] She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the US, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. But in the 1980s she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.[2]
Early years 1935–1955
[edit]Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was born Gwynion Lawrie John on 1 January 1935 in Ballarat, Australia.[2] She was the second of four daughters. Her father was director of an engineering firm and her mother an eclectic arts and crafts teacher–practitioner who surrounded her children with craft objects she had made.[3]
In 1954, she received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to ceramics was in the 1950s while a university student, taken with the Kent Collection of Chinese and Korean wares at the National Gallery of Victoria.[4] Excited by Bernard Leach's A Potter's Book,[5] she researched pottery in Australia for her honours thesis. She discovered and was enthralled by Ivan McMeekin, who had been apprenticed to both Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew in England.[3] She abandoned her honours year and started an apprenticeship with McMeekin.[3]
Apprenticeships 1955–1966
[edit]Between 1955 and 1959, Hanssen Pigott, as Gwyn John, held apprenticeships with several influential potters from both Australia and England. Her apprenticeship with McMeekin was at Sturt Pottery[6] in Mittagong, New South Wales 1955–1957. McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in 1953 to make and teach pottery in the studio traditions of Leach and Cardew, which emphasized the use of local materials for small-scale studio production.[7] At that time all clay bodies had to be made from hand-processed raw ceramic materials, as they were not available as commercially pre-mixed products. While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott came to appreciate the given and induced qualities of clay in addition to learning to admire form and beauty in a pot.[8][4]
Hanssen Pigott traveled to England in 1958. She first worked with Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery, established by Michael Cardew in 1926. In the same year she apprenticed Bernard Leach at St Ives, and Michael Cardew himself at Wenford Bridge. In 1960 she left Cornwall with her newlywed poet husband, Louis Hanssen to establish with him a studio in Portobello Road, London.[9] During their time in London, Hanssen Pigott (as Gwyn Hanssen) enrolled in evening classes at the Camberwell School of Art with Lucie Rie. Her work at this time was sometimes marked GH, sometimes simply H.[10] She separated from Louis Hanssen in 1965.[4]
Functional pottery 1966–1973
[edit]In 1966, after several visits, she moved to Achères, France where she bought a small house and set up her own pottery studio. She maintained a wood-fired kiln and dug her own clay. Though the clay was "faultless" she began increasingly to use porcelain bodies made for porcelain factories at Vierzon nearby.[3] "She never produced a standard line, published a catalogue or made a vase."[4]
- The domestic pot is considered to be an inferior object. For me there is no distinction between repeated and individual wares.[4]
Her potter's mark remained an impressed monogram GH. This is the decade in which she is regarded as having made "some of the finest functional stoneware and porcelain of all time".[2] Her work made her well known in the international ceramics community and she often taught in the United States and the Netherlands.[2] This period was celebrated by a big show of her work at the British Craft Centre in London in 1971.[4]
Decorated pottery 1973–1983
[edit]In 1973, she returned to Australia, moving to Tasmania in 1974 and marrying her studio assistant John Pigott in 1976. Under the name Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, she and her husband set up a pottery workshop in Tasmania with financial help from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.[4]
- We raw-glazed and fired with wood, and John blended clays and minerals from the far reaches of the island into stoneware and porcelain bodies and decorating pigments. Our work showed a definite European peasant bias and our markets were mainly local.[3]
In 1980 she separated from John Pigott. (She separated from each husband by moving away geographically but keeping his friendship and his surname.) She was a “tenant potter” that year in Adelaide at the Jam Factory Craft Centre. Having to "work with gas … I threw porcelain table settings, usually blue-grey or green celadon with a range of washed-out shino-type colours. And … I made a body of decorated work."[3] She continued this work 1981–1989 as potter in residence at the Queensland University of Technology: gas-fired dinner settings, wood-fired pots decorated with tiny patterns of indigo, ultimately picked out in gold.[3]
Still-life pottery 1984–2013
[edit]Hanssen Pigott returned to London for a show of her work at the Casson Gallery in 1984. Catching up with developments of the previous decade and reconnecting with her peers, she was overcome by a sense of "shallowness" and lack of "humanness" in her work.[3][11] Thus began the last and most famous period of her career. In this period she was based in country Queensland but showed her work especially through Garry Anderson (1956–1991) and his austere gallery in Sydney.[3] From this time her potter's mark was an impressed O.[10]
In her earlier work, Hanssen Pigott focused on producing functional ceramic wares. But she is best known for her more recent objects: three dimensional still life groupings of wood-fired porcelain with names like The Listeners and Breath—on which she worked from the 1980s. Caravan, an installation at Tate St Ives in 2004, was fifty-five-feet long.[2] The groupings were mainly though not entirely[8] inspired by the still-life paintings of the Italian Giorgio Morandi.[12] She herself regarded the change as curious, a distancing from objects in themselves so personal and handy.[13]
- I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach.[14]
She hints in her Autobiographical Notes that this distancing was encouraged by seeing so much of country Queensland from the air as a teacher for the Australian Flying Arts School.[3] Prompted by her evocative titles, nearly all viewers endow the work of this period with symbolic or metaphoric meaning.[15]
In 1989 she was the artist in residence at the Fremantle Arts Centre.[9] Later that year she moved to Netherdale in north Queensland. In 1993 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three-year Artist Development Fellowship by the Australia Council. In 1994 she was the artist in residence in the Ceramics Department of the School of Mines and Industries, Ballarat – her home town. In 2000 she set up a final pottery in Ipswich in south-eastern Queensland.[2]
In 2005, the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective exhibition Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey 1955–2005 with a 112-page catalogue.[16]
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott died on Friday 5 July 2013 in London, after suffering a stroke.[1] She had been arranging a show there.[2]
Influences
[edit]The variety of influence from Song Dynasty glazes and palettes to Leach–Cardew forms can be clearly seen in Hanssen Pigott's work. She has also written about her interest in the quiet still lifes of Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi, which influenced her later work.[11][8]
Song Dynasty ware
[edit]The Northern Song wares concentrated on the meditative qualities of form. Glazing was rich in colour, but decoration on the surfaces was minimal. What decoration there was delicate and restrained. The work is technically very accomplished.[17]
Leach and Cardew
[edit]In addition to her adherence to the aesthetic of the Song Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of form, which is aligned with the Cardew–Leach philosophy of the importance of the everyday and of humility in pottery:
- About form. I am sure that the forms of the most common, everyday utensils can evoke so much that is inexpressible in any other language, about humanness.[18]
Giorgio Morandi
[edit]Hanssen Piggot might have come to arranging her work in groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was definitely not without influences. Hanssen Piggot describes her interest in the paintings of Italian Giorgio Morandi in her essay Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity.[11] The still lifes of the English painter Ben Nicholson also played a part.[15] Hanssen Pigott describes how her work differs from the aspirations of Leach and Cardew:
- I no longer care if the cup, with its careful handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of tea set making), stands unused among a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a still life, somewhere higher than table height. It is still a cup—an everyday object as ordinary and simple as can be—but from somewhere, because of its tense or tenuous relationship with other simple, recognized, even banal objects, pleasure comes.[11]
Collections
[edit]Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found in the following collections.
Australian collections
[edit]Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria. Provincial galleries in Ballarat, Bathurst, Bendigo, Cairns, Castlemaine, Darwin, Devonport, Federation University Australia; Geelong, Gippsland, Gladstone, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Launceston, Newcastle, Orange, Shepparton, Stanthorpe and Townsville. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane; University of New South Wales, Sydney; Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart.
International collections
[edit]Canada: Winnipeg Museum; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; France: Fina Gomez Collection, Paris; Germany: Dr. Hans Thiemann Collection, Hamburg; Ireland: Belfast Museum, Northern Ireland; Japan: Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki; Netherlands: Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam; New Zealand: Auckland Museum; United Kingdom: Crafts Council of Great Britain, London; Henry Rothschild Collection, Shipley Art Gallery; Crafts Study Centre, Farnham; Regional Galleries Bristol, Maidstone, Manchester and Paisley; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; York Art Gallery; USA: Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin; Jack Lenor Larsen Collection; Los Angeles County Museum of Art.[19]
Honours
[edit]Her accolades include:
- 2002, Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), "for service to the arts as a ceramic artist and teacher of the craft."[20]
- 1998, Australia Council Fellowship 1998 Australia Council Fellowship Award.
- 1963, Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen, UK.[19]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Steve Dow (7 July 2013). "Gwyn Hanssen Pigott dies". Smh.com.au. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "The still lives of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott" in Harrod, Tanya (2015). The real thing. London: Hyphen Press. pp. 283–7. ISBN 978-0-907259-50-3.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hanssen Pigott, Gwyn (1991). "Autobiographical Notes". Studio Potter. 20 (1). Retrieved 30 October 2016.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (nee John) 1935–2013". Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia. 2016. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
- ^ Leach, Philip, "The Leach Legacy" in Leach, Bernard (2015). A Potter's Book. Chicago: Unicorn. ISBN 978-1-910065-16-7.
- ^ Cochrane, Grace. "70 Year at Sturt (1941–2011)— pottery". Sturt – Australian Contemporary Craft and Design. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
- ^ "Sturt | School of excellence in arts, design and fabrication". www.sturt.nsw.edu.au. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
- ^ a b c Rye, Owen. "Gwynn Hanssen Pigott: a Fifty Year Survey". Owen Rye Woodfired ceramics. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
- ^ a b Pascoe, Joseph; Museo internazionale delle ceramiche (Faenza, Italy); Concorso internazionale della ceramica d'arte (49th : 1995 : Faenza, Italy) (1995), Delinquent angel : Australian historical, Aboriginal and contemporary ceramics, Centro Di, ISBN 978-88-7038-272-3
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ a b Pearce, Judith. "Identifying Australian Pottery 1960s to Date". flickr. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
- ^ a b c d Hanssen Pigott, Gwyn (1997). "Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". Studio Potter. 26 (1). Retrieved 30 October 2016.
- ^ Whiting, David. "Gwyn Hanssen Pigott obituary". The Guardian. No. 12 July 2013. Retrieved 19 January 2016.
- ^ Hanssen Pigott writes, "Thankfully there are masters I can look to, who never seemed to miss. The makers of the Korean rice bowls, Giorgio Morandi. Their works confront and inspire, and imply humility, unconscious or highly, intensely conscious, they express a sure understanding. Of something. What? Is that truth in form? Are their forms true? Well, they have left us some sort of man-made, material, tangible expression in real stuff, real clay, real thick paint, which in its pulled back simplicity satisfies a surprising longing. And because I can appreciate it (a little), or feel it, then that understanding must be in me too—as deeply as I allow it. And also, perhaps, the potential to express it. Worth pursuing, would not you say? But perhaps, after all, not to be spoken about too much. Words get too big. Leave them." ""Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". Studio Potter. 26 (1): 5–8, 1997.
- ^ In full: "I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach. To make beakers that are totally inviting and then to freeze them in an installation. Worse still, to take so much time with each piece, carefully trimming and turning and removing most marks of the throwing … Old friends indeed be worried. And yet it has come slowly, out of observation, out of what cannot be refuted. These forms, these assemblages and groupings and jostlings and juxtapositions sometimes have a power to move me, and others. Strange, I cannot understand." "Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". Studio Potter. 26 (1): 5–8, 1997.
- ^ a b Seen at its best in Bruhn, Camerson. "Gywn Hanssen Pigott". ArchitectureAU. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
- ^ Smith, Jason (2005). Gwyn Hanssen Pigott : a survey of works 1955–2005. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria. p. 112. ISBN 0-7241-0264-7.
- ^ Cooper, Emmanuel (2000). Ten thousand years of pottery (4th ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3554-8.
- ^ In full: "That with only the very slightest gesture, the merest suggestion of the lip of a jug, or pouring spout, or the lightest softening of a curve, there can be expressed a sort of vulnerability, or a tenderness, or an attentiveness that causes us to pause. That the scale alone of some objects can touch us, and a small jug of open and generous form can somehow seem brave and absurd and a bit like ourselves. "Truth in Form: Pulled-Back Simplicity". Studio Potter. 26 (1):5–8, 1997.
- ^ a b "GHP CV updated May 2011" (PDF). Alcorso Foundation. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
- ^ "Ms Gwyn Hanssen PIGOTT". It's An Honour. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
