CORNISH HUES
Like so many of the design objects featured in Cooper Hewitt’s 2019 exhibition Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, Dutch ceramicist Kirstie van Noort’s pottery combines a compelling narrative with research, ingenuity, and material reuse to produce elegant and sustainable designs.
The SHOP offers her Cornwall Collection of handmade matte and eggshell finish porcelain plates, colored with pigments extracted from the copper industry in Cornwall, UK, and are inspired by the colorful landscape and rich history of Cornwall. Until the nineties, there were dozens of mines in Cornwall, from which copper, tin and silver were extracted. As prices of the materials dropped, the mines were forced to close, resulting in a landscape left with the remains of the mines, buildings, and piles of raw materials discarded by the industry, which also make a colorful pattern in the landscape.
Van Noort’s creative reuse of these raw materials and traces of ores left behind in the landscape from the industrial age in Cornwall have produced a range of colors for her Cornwall plates suggesting a new type of alchemy, turning copper, tin, and silver into a rich array of subtle earthy glazes for strong, light, and sustainable porcelain wares which are, by the way, dishwasher, and food safe. Plates come in three sizes: 2.7, 8.6, and 10.4 inches, and are priced from $25 to $125.
Van Noort’s excellent book, Colour and Material studies in Porcelain; Collection Cornwall is not only an essential companion to her pieces but will make a great addition to any design library. The book explores the origins and sources of the materials as well as the applications and colorful diversity created by applying them on porcelain.
The lushly illustrated and informative book is hand-numbered in an edition of 500, and details field research while exploring the origins and sources of the materials as well as applications and colorful diversity created by applying them on porcelain.
The book features a hand screen-printed cover and back with selected Cornwall pigments, a hand-editioned number, 6 fold-out pages illustrating 190+ developed colors and 62 raw materials extracted from Cornwall soil, and field trip and research findings captured in 60+ images.
Posted by J.B.
SHOP BLOG is written by the sales associates of SHOP Cooper Hewitt, bringing their singular design expertise into the digital realm.
