 She took some
time testing to find the right clay. Commercial porcelain would not do. Nor did her experiments with blue pate de verre bases for some pieces,
although attractive, hold the light in the way she wished. Eventually,
she settled for a bone china mix1 pioneered by Dr Owen Rye, which
required the addition of paper clay to stiffen each shape through the
firing process. Experiments with various shapes, including a tea bowl,
had shown that the range of forms suitable for this work was quite
limited by her aspirations for it. There was, in other words, a natural
series of possibilities.
Of course,
light could have been engaged by a variety of glazes and this would have
permitted stronger, thicker clay forms. Mellor rejected this possibility
early in her research. it would not have solved the problems of
translucency and fragility - the tell tale signs of time and presence in
nature. More importantly glazes are always, in some sense, cosmetic.
They continually tempt the artist to finesse inadequate or dull forms.
Even the most lucid glaze must suggest the triumph of artifice over the
natural.
Mellor's early
bowl experiments used the shape of the Datura flower to form a metal
template. She occasionally cast fragments of coral and other materials
from the landscape to study their surface and structure. Most of her
reflection on the fragility of natural forms was and is conducted
through photographs of textures and shapes large and small found in the
landscape, the shadow of a leaf or the surface of an eroded rocky cliff.
Her most
significant early experiment in the relation of light to such forms was
a series of etched lampshades and related vessels made in 1997.
Silhouettes of leaves and vines were painted onto the fired piece and
the background was sponged away so that the design appeared in relief.
This method enabled very careful control over the thickness and
translucency of the china so that light emanating from its centre could
be given specific quality.
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Beautiful as
they are these shapes remain self evidently artificial, a theatrical way
station towards the self sufficiency, the natural presence of Mellor's
recent bone china pieces. The next inevitable step was a struggle to
step back, to give her forms a chance to grow in terms of their own
fragility. First came experiments with pieces of paper clay shaped from
natural forms and embedded into the side of vessels such as Coral Bowl
or Flute, both made in 1997, so as to burn out, leaving a trace like the
fossil imprints of leaves and insects still discovered between layers of
coal and shale as they are broken for burning.
This burning
out of the motif is evidently much more than a technical convenience. It
comes close to a natural process of form creation, exact only in its own
terms but delightful because of the sensual dialogue it opens up between
the viewer and the object. The sense of change embodied in the form, of
the contribution time and decay have made to its ultimate shape
establishes the presence of the object in the natural world. Sight and
touch delight in these traces of change in the same way they would in a
pebble worn smooth by endless tides. The ability to achieve a strong
autonomous presence remains the most significant possibility for
ceramics as an art form.
The next step
for Mellor was a series of experiments with bowl shapes and other
appropriate forms. She developed and refined a slip casting technique
and in doing so moved her bowl forms further away from any references to
plant forms. One apparent exception to this appeared in a substantial
series of elongated cone like pieces inspired by her experience of the
stalactites and stalagmites of the limestone caves at Yallingup and
elsewhere in the south of Western Australia. It is only an apparent
exception. Not all natural processes are the same. These limestone
formations are built up very slowly by the dissolution and redeposition
of limestone by water which constantly covers them so as to form a
glowing crystalline light trap. Such mineral forms have a direct
relationship to Mellor's own interest in light and time. She named one
set of two cone pieces Passage of Time 1 (2000).
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