I will be launching a new collection of work at the Other Art Fair in  London and New York this Autumn.  This Cobalt Collection  started with research into the South London potters and the development of British Delft Ware.  This involved the use of  cobalt blue  in the form of smalt on white porcelain, a style and technique which originated in China.  Prior to its introduction British made ceramics were largely coloured using green copper glaze or slip ware which was earth tones.   The “new “ 16th century technology  was a result of the expertise coming into Holland from China through the Dutch East India Company. Then that expertise coming into Britain as the result of Dutch and French refugees bringin the expertise with them and then settling in what was then the outskirts of London.  At the time “foreigners” , and that meant anyone born outside of London were not allowed to settle in the City of London, so the potteries grew up in Southwark, Vauxhall,  and bringing the expertise and coloured glazes with them.

After a lovely conversation with a potter and British Museum Educator in my friends garden it grew into research into cobalt pigments all together and the colour traces they have left as evidence of trade which goes as far back in England as the late Bronze Age in the form of glass beads, probably Mediterranean, found in a UK burial pit which may have been as a result of the trade in Cornish tin or copper with the Iberian Peninsular and then in turn with Phoenician traders there.

So from the British Museum Collection I have found an evidence base of the making and trading of Cobalt pigments in glass, from 500BC, in ceramics from 

I have produced a series of works which using cobalt pigments and earth pigments, a selection will be at the Other Art Fair in London, a further selection in New York and a selection in Roy’s People Art Fair on the South Bank near where those refugee potters worked.