Jermaine Gallacher at his showroom in Lant Street
(Picture: Matt Writtle)The new year brings with it a wave of self-improvement involving everything from absurd diets to new hobbies. And, if the past five years are anything to go by, I will bet you my Michele de Lucchi vase that pottery will win hobby of the year 2022.
The trouble is, in this age of the personal brand and the side hustle, there’s no longer any such thing as an innocent hobby. Make five scalloped bowls at a hipster evening class and hey, presto, all of a sudden you’re a ceramicist.
Of course, there’s nothing strictly wrong with making a bit of spare cash. My question is, when did we stop doing things just because we enjoy them? Making a pinch-pot doesn’t have to mean hitting the jackpot.
Why should someone pay for your amateurish vases when they could have a laugh making their own?
More importantly, in the rush to monetise every facet of our lives, I fear we have lost the art of making something for the satisfaction and pleasure of the act alone.
There’s another baffling aspect to all this. Personally I’ve always considered ceramics and pottery to be the hardest design objects to get right, and have certainly found them the hardest to sell.
The cabinet at my showroom in Lant Street is awash with pots, plates and vases that I’ve taken a punt on over the years. Most of them have ended up as nothing more than dust magnets.
Recently the problem has accelerated. As part of the London design scene I’m confronted by a tidal wave of crackle-glaze vases and wiggly face plates threatening to breach the Thames barrier and subsume an already flooded marketplace.
This is not a manifesto against ceramics — heaven forbid! I’m a huge fan of masters of the craft such as Gavin Houghton, who makes witty sculpted plates and vessels.
I have yet to acquire one myself but I particularly love his sunshine faun bowl (I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a Mr Tumnus).
If we must have boobs and bums on our pots, and it seems at the moment that we must, then I’d pick one of Jude Jelfs’s angular, Eighties-inspired body jugs, based on real-life models and available in an array of colours.
Let’s leave the selling to the professionals and master slip casting and coiling for our own pleasure and enjoyment.
If you’re desperate to display your work outside your own home, no doubt your mum will find a space at hers.
