Albarello Jars 2020

My love of Dutch and English Delftware has been supplanted somewhat recently, after a holiday to central Italy last summer where I fell in love with antique Majolica wares. Shops, museums, market stalls, galleries all burst with an abundance of colour, pattern, delicate scrolled handles, fluted rims, elegant pedestals and so on.. and I was completely bowled over. I have been attempting to incorporate elements of this distinctive style ever since in my work.

As a starting point for the collection made for the Scottish Gallery, I used the traditional shapes of fluted dishes, tall jugs and albarello or medicine jars as a basis to highlight my fascination with linguistics - specifically the UK government’s response to the Covid 19 crisis in the form of slogans, phrases and sayings. Ranging from the simple and direct to the downright surreal, I selected my favourites and translated them into the Prime Minister’s favourite Latin using Google Translate and incorporated the results onto these traditional forms using recognisably ‘Majolica’ style devices such as script on curling ribbons and large formal cursive lettering painted onto the central panels of albarello jars.