Hidden Art meets Liz Mathews

 

 

Liz Mathews has two major strands to her work as a potter. Her pots are always characterised by bold textual inscriptions, fluently hand painted in a way that resembles the old tradition of illuminating precious manuscripts with decorative letters. The other side of her oeuvre is a more eccentric, British habit, in which she sculpts portraits of people’s houses to order. Textual inscriptions afford Liz the opportunity to indulge her passion for poetry, an equal first love with pottery. The architectural portraits indulge her enthusiasm for the minutiae of architectures, which she recreates in sympathetic material to the original building. Both activities have been the focus of an 18 year career, impressing collectors since she started out and realising an impressive maturity. To Liz, they are natural counterparts, each being the product of a highly informed eye for scale, balance and proportion.

 

I meet Liz at Whitechapel Pottery, her studio and gallery of nine years, which she runs with her partner, Frances Bingham. Both are resolutely independent spirits: while Liz sells her pottery exclusively through her own gallery, Frances runs the operation in tandem with her writing career. They set up their first small pottery in West Hampstead 18 years ago, then departed their native London for a spell in the Cambridgeshire countryside in Wisbech, before the lure of the city drew them back from the peace and quiet. They set up Whitechapel Pottery in a fascinating building on the site of an old saw mill. They built the pottery in an old lean-to, then set up a gallery shop in a former cart track that runs through to what is now their warehouse. It is a tranquil, inviting space, with a candlelit window display that invites in a committed customer base built up over years, and a diverse passing trade from the Royal London hospital next door and Whitechapel’s mosques.

Liz’s pots are borne of an intense, epiphanic process, evident in their final character. She explains: “I love the celebratory, extravagant, extrovert feeling of throwing. My influence has always been the poet John Clare and his idea of glorious nature, but not just nature poetry of a romantic rural tradition that begs to be admired. I find using a material that comes from the earth which can facilitate such strong human expression and emotion the thing that is invigorating.” As poet of nature’s mighty force, both red in tooth and claw but also spiritual and uplifting, John Clare is a potent father figure. He is matched in Liz’s esteem by women’s writing, and from her vast noticeboard of gathered scraps of poetry, photographs and flyers for literary and musical performances and lesbian and gay events, she directs me to a poem by Kathleen Jamie she picked from last week’s Guardian, called The Whale Watcher. It sums up Liz’s respect for “the unrivalled women’s perspective”, with dry humour and a cerebral attachment to nature. These are verses to add to Liz’s library of inscriptions and insights.

All of Liz’s pots are made as one offs, with the inscriptions individually chosen. “I look for the spirit of each piece while throwing,” says Liz. “I want to make a collection of brothers and sisters, not a set, so that people have a favourite, which is really the essence of hand-making.” The text aids a function of each pot that is particularly important to Liz. “The words are there to link the purpose of the pot with its physical form. But when people talk of function, I don’t distinguish between a votive and a domestic function. One very essential function of any object should be a way of engaging with the abstract. Clay is a treasured material which holds associations for everyone, right back to the earliest teapot your grandmother used.” The words that Liz hand paints on to express her pots’ functions, therefore, are ones like joy, abundance and light, implying a more spiritual, primitive function is inherent in domestic rituals like making tea or serving cake. Craft, particularly pottery, has a familiarity which is easier to relate to than fine art at times, and is capable of an equivalent value in facilitating expression. The emotional character Liz creates in each pot clearly translates to its owner, as she reveals: “People have had extreme responses - even weeping.”

As such, the house portraits are a chance for Liz to turn from the unfettered impulsiveness of throwing to the finer hand-building and close observation of the prosaic details in architectural frontages. Keen to stress that they are not models but sculpture in low relief, the house portraits are charming, nostalgic and homely. Press features have spawned international interest, bringing in a swiss log cabin commission. The Royal London Hospital has sat for its portrait a dozen times, called for by leaving dos and retirement presents. People often commission a house portrait when they move, as a memento, for around £250.

 

Liz works mainly to commission. “When people want to commission a piece, they come and look round the gallery, then discuss the price and who it is for and then I will suggest an inscription,” she says. Her engagement with the piece is vital to its success, so she insists on the freedom to follow its character. The commissioning process takes about 4-6 weeks, and her work ranges in price from £5 for stock items to £500 larger pieces and dinner services. A large orchard bowl, decorated with foliage leaves, fruit and text sells at around £200; a herb bowl is £20.

Fiona Sibley, November 2004

 

 

Winter Blues, Liz Mathews’ 2004 Winter Show at Whitechapel Pottery opens on Friday 12 November, part of Hidden Art Open Studios. Until 23 December.