Passions: Ceramics - a pot doesn’t need a Turner Prize price tag to be a thing of beauty

Why everyday pots and bowls deserve their spot in a museum

Vases and jugs on display at Seville's Antiquarium Museum. Pic: J Christie

Wandering around Seville recently we couldn’t miss the Metropol Parasol, the colossal wooden structure that dominates the old town skyline and is impressive in itself, but underneath lies the Antiquarium, a site that dates back to Roman times. Unearthed during building work, the excavations revealed the layout of part of the ancient city along with remains following a timeline up to the 12th century.

While the mosaics are marvellous and the fountains must have been fantastic, what drew me in for closer inspection was the ceramics; the vases, cups, bowls and oil burners that have somehow survived the centuries to speak to a contemporary audience about how life was lived, and demonstrate that across the ages those living it were not that different to us.

Show me a museum or tourist attraction and you’ll find me pottering among the pottery, admiring the skill of the unsung people who made the utilitarian items that require no plaque to explain their function or beauty.

A bowl recovered from the ruins at Seville's Antiqarium. Picture: J Christie

You‘ll never know who made that thumbprint on a bowl or whose fingers shaped the pouring spout of a jug because it wasn’t the emperor whose name is spelt out in mosaics and in whose name legions were victorious or vanquished, but the humble potters hard at work among the clay and kilns, their work every bit as essential in keeping their civilisation civil. Where would Caesar be without a bowl in which to soak his toga after a hard day at the Coliseum? Imagine the chaos that would have ensued down the Roman baths without a soap dish.

It’s in tribute to the providers of such essential everyday items that Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry made his Tomb to the Anonymous Craftsmen sculpture which was displayed in his Smash Hits exhibition in Edinburgh last year. A ship hung about with pots, urns and vials, it was his way of celebrating the anonymous craftspeople of history, those whose names we don’t know.

“I’m interested in the things that are all around and affect our every moment but we don’t necessarily pay attention to them,” he said as he launched the show, chuckling at the irony of the art world celebrating his ceramics and the time-honoured techniques used to create them.

I’m sure he’d be the first to agree that a pot doesn’t need a Turner Prize price tag to be a thing of beauty.

Janet Christie is a journalist and columnist at The Scotsman