The year was 1986. British potter Kate Malone, then 24, had flown down to India with her husband to meet their friends — visual artist Ravindra Reddy, and sculptors Trupti Patel and Dhruva Mistry in Ahmedabad, with whom they had forged a deep friendship during their time at the Royal College of London.
The India visit was also to catch a glimpse of the country’s rich pottery tradition. A desire that had them heading to Goa, with blue Lonely Planets as their guide and the murmurings about a ferry that would take them to Panjim. “I remember a massive Parle-G billboard and these porters in red shirts that grabbed our luggage. We jumped on the deck of the ferry, and with chickens and goats and people crammed around us, it was really the most memorable and raw time,” she recalls.
It was a sharp contrast to her 2018 visit, to be part of India’s first ceramics triennale. “It was a fascinating experience,” she says, adding that it was the year Indian pottery had its aha moment because it was the first time that the art community had moved away from pottery as just an extension of clay to something more sculptural.
