EACH POT BEGINS ITS CONCEPTION AS A NARRATIVE , MADE TANGIBLE IN FORM, A QUIET
TRANSLATION OF MEANING INTO MATTER.
gốm maker
ceramic practice.
A ceramic practice drawn from thợ gốm¹, carrying the cadence of quiet, often anonymous labour that has shaped Vietnam’s ceramics. In thợ², distinct from nghệ nhân³, exists the gesture of humility, of the work presiding over its maker.
¹ thợ gốm: Vietnamese for ceramics worker
² thợ: worker | maker
³ nghệ nhân: artist
² Hoa | glazed porcelain (2023)
Each vessel begins with a fragment of text that guides the development of form and surface.
The structure materialises over days, using traditional coiling techniques rendered contemporary through the use of excessively thin, pinched coils. The surface is slowly composed, with layers of oxides and glazes brushed or stamped into place.
The raw edges, the base bearing the banding wheel markings, are all records of the hand in motion made visible.
It is in these interruptions and irregularities that the work finds its shape .
TRACING THE WORK.
A physical interpretation of the narrative, form that emerge once the language ends.
¹ An Intersection | glazed stoneware (2023)
(title: life remade)
(title: everyday fare)
The edges of the work are reconstructed through a deliberately pinched process, leaving the rim raw and sharpen intention and creation.
Each coil, fine to the point of fragility, is stacked and joined, pinched upward, blending clay molecules into a single structure.
The glaze is applied in thin layers, using a dry hog hair brush or scraps of old newspaper, so to retain the papery texture of the bisque pieces underneath.
(title: reconstruction)
(title: fringes)
The work was made in service of expression (a sculptural object to live with and to let inhabit a space) over service of utility.
The chipped tableware is reimagined through a meticulous arrangement of fine coils, light in weight—a contrast of the sturdy, thrown tableware.
Slow coiling is an intimate practice that values restraint, where meaning is found in the quiet spaces between intention and creation.
(title: the idea of status)
(title: dissolution)
ABOUT
artist, creator.
THANNIE PHAN is the ceramic artist behind the practice gốm maker, based in Naarm.
Formed within the tradition of Vietnamese hand-coiling, but developed away from its convention, her practice articulate a distinctly contemporary ceramic language. Shaped not by utility but by her narratives of place, memory, people and their imprints, the work occupies an ambivalence space, one poised between permanence and transience.
(¹ Behind the work)
Making composition, from hand-building technique to glaze application is detailed here.
(² Behind the words)
For the words that precede the vessels, visit Notes From A Potter Substack.