Welcome to NewsFile, your weekly digest of news and happenings from the world of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics. We kick off the week with some snazzy ceramist-designed kicks.
KOIO + Ben Medansky Kicks
Ceramists certainly know their way around the studio, but LA-based ceramist Ben Medansky knows his sneakers. He recently teamed up with luxury sneaker brand KOIO to design a minimalist inspired shoe that reflects both an industrial aesthetic coupled with an innate human quality, the brand writes.
Together with Ben, we designed a sneaker that references his work. The calf leather upper features grey speckles, just like some of Ben’s white-glazed stoneware clay. The sole picks up Ben’s favorite color – a strong cobalt blue. And, importantly, the sneaker features two pieces of ceramics, handmade by Ben in his studio in LA.
Medanksy work explores variations on radial symmetry and grids using a limited color palette, according to his artist bio.
It is an appropriation of aesthetics employed by the mechanical world; an experiment in mimicking strong forms out of a fragile material. The output is a meditation on minimalism and mechanics, re-mastered in earthen and eternal material.
Pre-Boston Tea Party Tea Pot
The New York Times reports this far from ordinary teapot with a missing lid and a repaired handle sold at auction February 20, 2018 for 575,000 pounds with fees—roughly $806,000. The teapot is thought to be the oldest known American porcelain teapot, dating even before the Boston Tea Party.
The auctioneers Woolley & Wallis had recently attributed the piece to John Bartlam, an enterprising potter who produced blue-and-white-decorated soft-paste porcelain at the Cain Hoy factory in South Carolina in the late 1760s…In the past 10 years or so, following archaeological excavations at the site of his factory, scholars have recognized that Bartlam’s porcelain was the first to be produced in America, predating the better-known Bonnin and Morris wares made in Philadelphia from 1770 to 1772.
Be sure to read more here.
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