Schéffer Anna

Ephemerity or revival: these remain a mystery. What does it mean an eye closed into the dead material, the other opened a little out of the eyelid? The awakening to consciousness, or the quiet acquiescence to our fate, that the things around us are disappearing, then being re-created again. Everybody wears a mask. This recognition is incident to the cognition of ourselves. So our personality contains our mask.

In the ancient cultures, at the time of the Inca and Eastern empires, masks had symbolic, cultic meaning. The spiral of snail is the symbol of the soul, gold means Sun, the Sun itself is the life and knowledge.

This pattern was copied from a tree-trunk. I use prints of real foils and characteristic weeds. I can not resist the Sheperd’s purse, its special structure. This dried melon peel was found at the tip of a pole in Croatia. I am carving the sealing patterns from chamotte-foam bricks.

According to the tradition, specialisation always belonged to the pottery. They were the jar-makers and plate-makers, and so on. Generally, ceramic artists do have their feature articles. My favourites are the masks and the wicker plates.

As I think, an arts and crafts ceramic should bear some other grounds than the simple usefulness, it must give more than the pure function. Around the village of Veresegyház I have a secret spot to gather willow wickers. I need these wickers to make the handles of plates.

I use clay with chamotte. It is well-formable and can be fired without problem

The objects covered with glaze containing metaloxides are taken from the kiln in red-hot, then buried into sand, mixed with wood chips. Wood blazes up, but, lacking the air, it is depriving the oxides of the oxygen to burn. In this way the pure metal, usually copper, appears on the surface of the objects. We need to wait several minutes before uncovering. These minutes are the most nervous and exciting ones…

Honestly, I am happy to fire together with Éva Kun. It is a great to share with someone the joy of surprise immediately. While we have a practice of several decades, we can not ever be sure in advance what colours are generated and where. The raku itself is magic! The magic of the raku is is effective both on greater surfaces and on smaller objects, even if it is a vase for one flower or a cornucopia. Sometimes we are screaming with delight.

11/3/2012 Budapest