Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s recent show at Christine Abrahams Gallery continues her earlier themes based on groupings of functional porcelain objects. There is little in this exhibition to question her status as one of Australia’s most revered ceramic artists. Yet the tension between the domestic object and the status of the fine art object is inevitably raised by the multiplicity of red stickers. Compared with past decades, something has changed amongst the well-heeled collectors who now pay this maker of modest and humble domestic ceramic objects large amounts of money for groups of her works. Pigott alone amongst Australian makers of functional ceramic objects, indeed makers of any ceramic object/s, seems able to command such respect, both professional and commercial. Who is this person, and why is she revered so?

As Gwyn Hanssen Pigott approaches her seventh decade this show demonstrates that she has little left to prove in regard to the consistency of her work. The scale remains modest, the objects domestic, and the surfaces have generally remained simply glazed, with an exception during the eighties of some fine and restrained gold lustre decoration. The finishes are as ever unflawed. The work has generally been wood-fired within a number of variations. Pigott shares a similar background with a number of other notable ceramists of her generation, having travelled to Japan in the fifties to study to what was then seen as the ‘source’ of fine ceramics. She subsequently worked in England, France, and Tasmania, and is now located in Queensland.

Pigott emerged during the period of post-war optimism and the focus on individualism after the restrictions of the war years. Grace Cochrane in The History of Australian Crafts has done a good job of outlining how this reflected on the revival of the crafts. During this period, it would be fair to say that Bernard Leach through his seminal A Potter’s Book was largely responsible for the interest in orientalising ceramics among Western ceramists. Harold Hughan in his Melbourne Glen Iris garden workshop began to make some of Leach’s celadons and tenmoku glazes, selling them to a growing and devoted audience. In the United States, Peter Voulkos was making full-formed beautifully thrown Song dynasty-style vase forms which have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum New York, before his iconoclastic and expressionistic pieces of the mid-fifties.

Echoing William Morris, Leach outlined the role of the craftsperson as one of resisting the tide of ugly commercial production. This reflects Leach’s earlier connection with traditional Japanese village ceramics and the writings of Yanagi, in The Unknown Craftsman. The notion of unselfconscious object making with respect for the medium permeates Leach’s book. Yet this same spareness of design and so called truth to materials was similarly resonated within Bauhaus design principles, where simplified unadorned form for industrial production became an aesthetic in itself. While Bauhaus rationalism was swept away by the kitsch of Art Moderne, its aesthetic nonetheless infiltrated some of the small workshops of ceramic artists via proselytisers such as Marguerite Wildenhain who emigrated from Germany to the US after the war. Some of this also permeated the Scandinavian design aesthetic, so strong in Britain during the fifties and sixties. Piggott’s works resonate with this spareness and concern for material qualities, and their uncompromising and unselfconscious connection with the functional genre.

Pigott has been well placed to feed on this confluence of influences, fitting neatly between the spheres of East and West. In the recent small show at Christine Abrahams Gallery in Richmond, thirteen items, each comprising from two to eight or more groupings of objects, were on display in the smaller western room with painter Alan Mittlelman. We find a ‘Bauhausian’ notion of equality between media, unusual within contemporary exhibition practise. And it worked well for me, with the powder soft textures of Mittelman’s finely worked surfaces and finely grided motifs sitting in calm consort with the stasis of Pigott’s hard translucent surfaces.

Pigott may not delight in any association of her work with the old Bauhausian design aesthetic, and probably neither would the collectors paying high prices for her pieces. Rather, Pigott’s reputation ‘took off’ through her perceptive alignment of the mood of her own work with the aesthetic of the Italian painter Morandi. She began to selectively group her pieces, as ‘Still Lives’ and in one elegant move, managed to side-step the taint of functionalism and ‘craftiness’ still so entrenched within the minds of collectors supporting the Australian gallery system.

Pigott has remained remarkably successful within the past fifteen years, both locally and internationally. The recent Abrahams show demonstrates her movement along the path of refinement and subtle plays of surface texture and colour combinations. Who dares say that ‘craft’ does not play any part in this? Finely wrought translucent edges, well defined forms thrown and turned from the difficult Limoges porcelain, the interplay of translucent soft surfaces with harder glassier finishes, the well-fitted, sheer glazes contrasted with the broadly crackled glazes. These are the markers of a seasoned and highly accomplished craftsperson who has accumulated an intimately detailed understanding of her chosen medium, right down to the last subtle intimate detailing of each piece.

Pigott shares her background with Les Blakeborough and Peter Rushforth. Both somewhat older, they nonetheless are aligned as makers of orientalising functional objects within strong material traditions. It seems strange to describe these as ‘committed’ artists, as this conjures up either dedication or insanity, however they may be described as makers who have consistently aligned their skills with their aesthetic aspirations over decades. There are few others who have been prepared to follow. Perhaps closest to Piggott’s background is Prue Venables, whose finely crafted work in the same difficult medium has a Nordic coolness and refinement compared to Pigott’s warmer, softer finishes and less complex forms.

This recent show is not a matter of seeing new works by Pigott, but instead of enjoying minor changes to the story. Their utility makes an easy subliminal connection as softly shaped handles and fine edges invite use: these are pieces wrought from a maker whose experience has been grounded in making objects intended for the table. Yet their groupings and the gallery context in which they are presented destine them for shelf rather than table. It is the sum of Pigott’s pieces that makes them live and breathe. These are not pretentious works. They are modestly but clearly assured, and they seek something further and more lasting than temporary ‘flash’. Their proportions suggest a ‘weightedness’, a significant presence, rather than weightiness. There is an implied offering to the senses: touch to the hands and to the lips, soft colourings, from cool to warm for the eyes. These are pieces that succeed in being both delicate and yet substantial, in which groupings create a musical-like rhythm and harmony. Perhaps it is this subtle combination of the artist’s unfailing affinity for her materials and the engagement of the senses as well as the subconscious that have created Pigott’s sure place in the hearts of Australian collectors of fine art.