V&A Museum, Ceramics: 7 Oct 2021
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Understanding/misunderstanding/placing/misplacing/friends in mystery across time
The latest addition to the V&A buildings, Amanda Levete Architects porcelain tiled entrance as well as additional underground gallery space comprises of over 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles. Amazing threshold to cross as I head for the fourth and top floor, a mercifully quiet part of the museum, the ceramics collection.
But, first…this chair…
On my way to the ceramics collection, I walked through ‘Furniture’ which is just beside ceramics and I stopped at this Orkney Chair.
To take in the texture, rhythm of the weave and overall design I’ve always loved, yet also find somewhat problematic…from Orkney, collected by posh English people with overly romantic (arguably patronising) notions of Scottish island life — yet, still lovely, lovely chairs.
The hooded one I looked at belonged to Augustus John, a great painter, but also a total misogynist, basking in bo-ho acclaim while the women around him did all of life’s bullshit jobs in relative poverty as he slept around and absorbed admiration.
How I loved that show at Tate Britain — Gwen and Augustus John, where Augustus was really shown up by his sister. I had a great laugh about it with John Hoyland (R.I.P.). John was consistently adamant Gwen was the better painter and there was the proof, side by side, absolutely clear as day. He was sure, I was sure ~ everybody else was probably less sure…this is way off ceramics…but related, because the chair is gorgeous, but it’s meaning and history is complicated.
We ascribe meaning to objects for strange and intriguing reasons. In this case, the appreciation of Augustus and entourage has an all too familiar haughtiness ~ a weird ownership and false belief stemming from cultural insensitivity. Yet still seen as exceptional good taste and sophistication.
I’m sounding judge-y — probably because I harbour some similar scars of assumptions, misunderstandings & others telling me who I am, what I think and do ~ as an American, as a woman, as a vicar’s wife…
So out beyond judgment, to seeing, to feeling, appreciating these complexities, allowing myself to dig into them. This is interesting to me, keeps me digging, keeps me engaged with both my mind and the world/past world.
Enter Room 137, cabinet 17, shelf 7~
{Big shout out to the V&A staff member who sat me down at the computer and showed me how to look stuff up. That’s heaven for a dyslexic when someone actually shows you how to do something, rather than rattling off a list of instructions…thank you, wherever you are, I am sending you good juju.}
Cabinet 17, shelf 7 was full of very small terracotta pieces, no glaze, no fancy-ness. Pieces that can sit in your hand, pieces I’d love to hold, pieces made by somebody’s hands thousands of years ago, 1st to 3rd century BC. I have that familiar feeling arising — I am wishing I could meet the person who made these, look into their eyes, find out what they last ate, where they woke up, what it’s like to be them. Sometimes I try these things in meditation…
This maker likely lived in the Swat Valley, where these pieces were found (excavated by a British military man…) likely lived with the influences of the Silk Road ~ where people collided, collaborated, squabbled, cooperated, traded. Like a city that’s also a river, a city on the move like only a well trodden trade route can be. Where Alexander the Great was and conquered, where the Taliban outlawed education for women, where Malala was shot in the head and survived, where the Taliban blow up ancient Buddhist monuments, where Italian specialists take a full 9 years to repair one of the many destroyed monuments, where there are mountains, lakes, great natural beauty ~ mentioned in the Rig Veda (like, wow), a home of early Buddhism. Home of many notable stupas, a personal favourite of mine.
And I begin to wonder how these little thingees on the fourth floor of the V&A, in room 137, cabinet 17, shelf 6 are touching so much of what touches me…it’s uncanny and they are so little, so sweet, so hand held…
Some stupas, you’re welcome:
And there’s this guy looking at me…just under 3 cm across.
I wonder what this head was for? There aren’t eyes, is he meditating…the smile takes priority over the eyes…is this a state of non-attachment? Is this knowing the world is more than what we see, turning inwards to connect in a deeper way.
Is it a ‘he’ ~ likely since the women on the shelf appear to have full bodies, with boobies, even suggestive vagina lines, mid-drifts showing and I start to feel sad about the devadasi, some of which the little terracottas definitely depict~ more Hindu than Buddhist ~ the stories Allan told us when we were in Bangalore on the research trip. Women being sold into sex slavery at a temple by their families, a horrible existence that somehow brings prestige to a family…
Those terracottas, the women, are different. The men get to be gingerbread men, to ride horses, to have funny faces. They don’t need boobs to be players in the story. Are these figures even from the same site?
I do a little research and — no, they are not, they are from somewhere else ~ the gingerbread people are from the Buddhist temples in Swat Valley…the devadasi women from much further south, in northern India. But they are stuck together on the same shelf, I guess because they are sort of the same colour and size and India/Pakistan-ish? Hmmm…anyway, what do they make of eachother? I would like the time to write a story about the conversations artefacts have with eachother when they get plopped right beside a ‘foreigner’ artefact…
I don’t really want to look at the devadasis…it’s the other ones…the heads, the gingerbread vibe — maybe I just can’t take more gender stuff, more historical woman pain…not right now. It makes me close down and feel heavy, whereas — the face opens me up, brightens me up.
How something so simple can connect so quickly, so recognisable, friendly, a fellow traveller…it’s sort of like the deeper, groovier ancestor of the yellow smile-y face.
Why was it made?
Was it a trinket for a traveller?
A something to hold in prayer?
Days later in the ceramics workshop, I try to make one and realise the two finger prints, teeny nose holes & incised mouth isn’t that easy to copy…I will keep trying…
I want to know how these pieces got here, into room 137.
Bequeathed from the Gordon Collection, 1961. Who is that? How did they get them? Why did they acquire them?
I dig deeper.
The Gordon Collection is also in the British Museum, an institution who does a far superior job in explaining provenance of objects than the V&A.
There is an unanswered email in the ether from me to them, asking a simple question…these research institutions, these massive collections claim to want to make these objects & collection a public asset ~ yet I find if one tries to engage with the collection in a manner not narrowly mediated, by asking questions, wanting to draw new conclusions ~ the resource is simply not there, the willingness has taken a hike, the engagement is on leave…
Not entirely unlike asking our college librarian, who just days before was advocating for our interaction with the library and it’s collection, yet I have managed to make a dead end request and am told to wait for some further library training that is allegedly on the horizon.
There are barriers to information. Is the information age eating itself?
But I discover Col D.H. Gordon. And I am intrigued. He was born in late 1800’s, a Col in the British Army, an archaeologist…
From the British Museum: Well-known soldier and archaeologist working for many years in colonial India, he collected, excavated and published widely (esp. The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture, 1960). Presented collections of stone tools from sites in India to University College London, Institute of Archaeology throughout the 1950s which were subsequently donated to the British Museum.
I want to read his book, I want to know more about him. His motivation and connection to these objects. How he interpreted them. The Central Saint Martins librarian gave me a weird no with some weird why-nots including not doing such things for first years…so I have ordered my own copy from the world wide web, getting excited about review from The Society of Antiquaries of London in 1960…
This is a very attractive aspect of ceramics to me. The passing from hands to hands, through institutions, a sludgy reflection of ourselves and the mystery of the past we keep wanting to touch and dig up.
References
Among the Bohemians: experiments in living 1900–1939
Nicholson — Perennial — 2005
The prehistoric background of Indian culture
Gordon — Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers — 1997
The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture. By D. H. Gordon. 10 × 7. pp. 199 + 32 pls. and 25 figs. Bombay: N. M. Tripathi (Private) Ltd. 30s.: The Antiquaries Journal
Wheeler
