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Gwyn Hanssen Pigott had an established reputation in England and France through her inclusion in significant exhibitions and prominent collections before she returned to Australia. Although we in Australia know little of this aspect of her career, her nomination as a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen in London in 1963 indicates the high regard in which her ceramics were held. This profile has now been reasserted on a broader scale through the significant achievement in her Still Life groupings. Evidence of this profile is to be found in her receipt of numerous awards, inclusion in many public collections and successful solo exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, St. Louis, New York and London. These works, produced from the late 1980s, are the culmination of forty years of dedication and commitment to her craft.

The tradition of functional ceramics has informed her career and an astonishing consistent quality of clarity of vision and precision of execution has been manifested throughout. The still, calm presence of artists such as Piero della Francesca and Giorgio Morandi have been acknowledged influences which she then transforms with the sensate experience of the potter. To hear Hanssen Pigott speak of the qualities of tension of the forms, the defining character of rim, foot and profile, the volumetric presence of the interiors and the penetrations into surrounding space is to appreciate how important these properties are to potters such as Leach, Cardew, McMeekin and Hanssen Pigott. It also emphasises how poorly such values have been regarded within the framework of European art history.

As a Fine Arts student at the University of Melbourne Hanssen Pigott passed through the displays of Chinese ceramics at the National Gallery of Victoria on her way to the painting galleries which were the principal focus of the course. She responded to the presence of the ceramics in the famous Kent Collection (both the serenity of the Sung pieces and the vitality of the Neolithic wares inspired her). There she also saw the work of Harold Hughan, Australia’s first exponent of stoneware, who told her of Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book when she visited him. She decided to devote her third year thesis to contemporary Australian pottery and, unusually for the period, she was permitted to do so. Armed with this aspiration and the inspiration of Leach’s book she visited other potters to try to elucidate in contemporary pieces the spirit that Leach venerated. She heard that Ivan McMeekin had just returned to Australia after four years experience with Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge Pottery, Cornwall. When she visited him at Mittagong she recognised the qualities she had intuited both in his own work and in the pots he collected. Hanssen Pigott then terminated her academic studies and became his apprentice for three years from 1955. She recalled: “Ivan taught me how to read pots: with my eyes and hands. He taught how to know the qualities of clay bodies, the subtle differences of glaze surface and depth, about thoroughness and patience and the futility of short cuts” (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 46).

The philosophy and publications of Bernard Leach had a profound effect on pottery in post-war Australia. Consequently Hanssen Pigott travelled to England to further her studies with him (at his Pottery at St. Ives), and other major potters of the time, Ray Finch at the Winchcombe Pottery, Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge Pottery and Alan Craiger-Smith at the Aldermarston Pottery. She states:

Those five years, in rural workshops, taught by generous and enthusiastic masters who had given so much of their life’s energy and understanding to their craft, nourished and formed me as a potter and confirmed my choice of vocation. Here I was witness to the daily commitment to quality, the constant curiosity and change, the personal involvements with the history of the craft and the obsessive reaching for deeper insights (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 47).

While most Australian potters followed Leach in looking towards China (and later Japan) as the source of their inspiration, Hanssen Pigott was largely focused on Europe.

Her apprentice years ceased when she set up a pottery in London with the Canadian writer Louis Hanssen (who she met while at the Leach Pottery and later married). She established a friendship with the Austrian potter Lucie Rie who became an important mentor and through her met the German potter Hans Coper. To her understanding of the integrity of the country based potters she added an appreciation of European elegance and sculptural presence which their work manifested. If there was a lasting influence on Hanssen Pigott’s work it is to be found in the refined forms of Rie. Coper’s 1965 exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries, London, however, had an effect which she only fully assimilated decades later, “I walked down the steps into a place so still; held, not immediately by the pots themselves, but by a sense that the space between the pots were recognised forms too: negatives.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 47).

Three years earlier (1962) on a visit to Paris Hanssen Pigott saw an exhibition of French traditional wood-fired pottery from Haut-Berry at the Museum of Folk Art and Tradition and was attracted by their freshness and vigour. In this work she discovered a European tradition of long wood firing which paralleled that of Japan but was quite without its self-consciousness. Subsequently she purchased a house in Achères in Central France and set up a pottery. The first pots she produced, with dense vitrified bodies, were strongly influenced by the local examples which she described as “unpretentious but rich in a way I could easily relate to with their ash glazes, celadons and proto-porcelain type glazes.” (Hanssen Pigott, p. 1971, p. 4).

It was not long, however, before she began using porcelain refining the glazes and using the wood firing to produce more subtle effects. It was her response to the clay, form, glazes and firing that was important. For Hanssen Pigott there was no sense in separating production ware from one-off-work as an expression of the potter’s personality as, “One is expressing oneself in everything, absolutely everything. In the way you make the glaze, the way you pack the kiln, it is all yourself.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1971, p. 5).

The death of her husband in 1968 and the social unrest at the time introduced a period of dissatisfaction and soul searching. Like many of the 1960s generation she meditated and experimented with communal living. She lectured at several European institutions and worked with the Bread and Puppet Theatre of Vermont before deciding to return to Australia in 1973. Hanssen Pigott taught at the East Sydney Technical College for a time then settled in Tasmania with John Pigott where they established a pottery at Linden Rise, Kingston in 1975 with the help of a Crafts Board Grant. (John Pigott set up another pottery at Lower Longley in 1979). The stoneware items they produced there made use of local clays and glazes. Hanssen Pigott then undertook a year’s tenancy at the Jam Factory Workshop, Adelaide in 1980. During this year she shared a gas-fired kiln which gave her greater control, especially in relation to celadon glazes, which she adapted for a range of dinner wares. She also started to decorate her pieces with blue geometric patterns inspired by Nigerian indigo dyed textiles. Subsequently she was invited to continue the production pottery established by Kelvin Grealy at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education (now the Queensland University of Technology) at Kelvin Grove. She built a wood-fired kiln and remained potter-in-residence until 1988 when she established a pottery at Netherdale in the Mackay hinterland. It was in Queensland that the various strands of her life melded in a remarkable way.

While in Paris she saw an exhibition by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, who was new to her, “I found his early work disturbing. There was austerity in his drawings and etchings, a pulling back from colour and sensuality in his painting which I found difficult at first. And then it began to reach me, the profound realness of what he was painting and describing.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1987, p. 12).

But it was not until 1988 that the idea of constructing still life groupings inspired by Morandi’s painted assemblages evolved. It would also, of course, be mediated through the groupings of ceramics that form when production wares are displayed and used.

During these years in Brisbane the support of artists such as Madonna Staunton and Leonard Brown was especially gratifying to Hanssen Pigott. They were responsive to her work. The Garry Anderson Gallery in Sydney represented Staunton, who produces extremely reductive collages, and Brown who paints subtly tonal canvasses. Hanssen Pigott’s work meshed very well with the refined and intellectual style this gallery promoted. Her first exhibition with his gallery was later the same year.

After the 1986 wood firer’s conference in the Latrobe Valley Hanssen Pigott was invited to use Heja Chong’s Bizen kiln. She prepared for the firings by producing shapes unrelated to Eastern traditions some of which, such as the tapering and mallet shaped vases, find parallels in Morandi’s early paintings. She first exhibited a group of these pieces at the 'Australian Crafts 1988’ exhibition at the Meatmarket Craft Centre and received a Bicentenary Crafts Award. She did not pursue Bizen style firings as she found the markings of the pieces too complex to create her still life groupings. Her first specific still life works were made during her period at the Fremantle Art Centre in early 1989 and formed the basis of her exhibition at the Garry Anderson Gallery later that year.

At the same award she introduced the first group of her 'Inseparable Bowls.’ Hanssen Pigott has always worked in a domestic scale and bowl forms are of great importance to her, but the modest dimension of her pieces tend to be overlooked in group exhibitions. Group of bowls both create a stronger presence and emphasise the tension of from relationships.

One of the enduring qualities of her work is her deep reverence for the tradition, materials and processes of her craft,

The qualities that make you ask how can such a simple thing as a bowl, something you eat from, last in time and still be magical, still be elusive in this century? How can something so simple be so alive and lasting? . . . I was not interested in being a potter for the sake of earning a living, making functional pots, putting my hands in clay, expressing myself, adopting a lifestyle-none of those things. It was the curiosity about the quality, the essence of the pots (Hanssen Pigott, 1989).

Hanssen Pigott underwent a practical training through the system of apprenticeship and not the 'hot house’ tertiary education system where every student is expected to develop a unique style.

Her development as a potter focused on interior qualities. It is this element of the still life works that shines forth in the still calm and the quiet presence. Hanssen Pigott’s forms, composed as there are of rounded wheel-thrown forms, are even more restricted than the forms chosen by Morandi, and with the restrained glaze colours are as subtle as Morandi’s most reticent watercolours. Although Morandi’s work may have been the initial inspiration the groupings have asserted their own individuality. 'Still’ lifes is also something of a misnomer when we consider the jauntiness of works such as Jug Parade 1995 or the slow, lateral movement of her landscape groupings.

Her preference for wood firing also introduces the idea of transformation. In preparing the pieces for glazing it is her response to the form and the character she wishes to develop that determines the colour and finish of the glaze. She then responds to subtle changes breathed on the surface of the glazes and the variation of the forms that enhances their initial character which prompts their selection for specific groups. She selects and places and works with a group of pieces until a resolution is established – it is essentially an intuitive process. Hanssen Pigott speaks of her response to her arrangements,

As we look, volumes turn to line, and interior colours float from thin rims, making an echo. Kinship of form, tone, line and remembrance, brings the pots together and holds them there. We, at whim, can change all that: can pour the jug, test the ties, change the stillness: watch the play. I love to tread the fine line between the static and the lively, the seductive and the pretty (Hanssen Pigott 1995).

Essentially these pieces have become non-functional 'art works’ though informed with the entire history of traditional ceramics. These essentially European objects have become true objects for contemplation in the Eastern tradition. Hanssen Pigott acknowledges that the pieces could be arranged differently (In fact, in her more recent works Hanssen Pigott offers alternate settings for the selected group which evoke different emotions in the potter and viewer.), but it requires a high level of visual sophistication to be aware of the forms and tensions of the grouping. Despite the easy rapport such works foster with the viewers most would defer to Hanssen Pigott’s own arrangement.

In 1992 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council. She moved from her rural retreat in the Mackay hinterland to Bundamba, a suburb of the old industrial town of Ipswich (now a dormitory suburb for Brisbane) to be closer to support and resources.

Significant honours have continued to be awarded to Hanssen Pigott including a Visual Arts and Crafts Emeritus Award in 1997; an Australia Council Fellowship in 1998; and Order of Australia Medal in 2002, all in recognition to her contribution to the field of ceramics in Australia. For a practicing potter, however, the greatest honour has been a survey at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 'Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey 1955-2005’ in 2005.

Hanssen Pigott’s work is a telling rejoinder to some contemporary 'post-modern’ ceramists who play with the concepts and traditions of pottery without having the technical skills (or as profound a knowledge of pottery’s own history) and others who promote the gratuitous appeal of colour and style.

It is work in which the quality of making is an intrinsic part of the overall effect. Hanssen Pigott is an artist who understands her material and the processes of throwing and turning; and who appears to relish the delight of battling with them to achieve a dynamic control between balance and freedom. But more than this, these are pots which refer to the way we often take 'the domestic’ for granted. By encouraging us to meditate on the importance of everyday objects, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott restates a commitment to ceramics which is especially welcome at a time when post-modern cynicism offers stimulation but no solutions (Copper, 1993, p. 5).

Writers:

Cooke, Glenn R.Note: Primary Biographer

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2010