Tall Candelabra with Flowers by Susan Nemeth 2024

Material: Porcelain, stains, glaze, ceramic transfers, deconstructed transfers from the
historical Spode Factory, gold leaf.
Technique: Carved
3 firings, highest 1280 degrees
Supported in the kiln by individually constructed porcelain pillars
Measurements: H 56 cm W 38 cm D 15 cm

Eighteenth-century European porcelains are my reference for the candelabras. But these symbols of perfection eliminate the mark of the maker. Disrupting, simplifying, and transforming these objects creates a bare essential quality, almost a caricature. I am investigating the outcomes of rapid sketching, capturing the essence of the quick sketch and translating this into sculptures of pottery. Starting with drawing in museums, I make, remake, and redraw to create doodles on paper and in clay. I am interested in how, by repeatedly sketching a piece from memory, the unconscious jotting becomes more fluid, energized, and anthropomorphic as it mutates, and by what means this translates into ceramic. Porcelain is chosen for its purity, sensitivity, and paradoxical qualities of fragility and strength.
It has its own energy and motion during the firing. Transfers, glaze, and gold leaf allude to the
material’s extravagant and illustrious history.