Curiosities, 2019

This work is inspired by an agateware teapot made in Stoke between 1750 and 1765 that looks like a shell that looks like a rock, and is adorned with Chinese imagery. The teapot as an imitation of a ‘cabinet of curiosity’, a hybrid form of cultural imagery and exoticism, which carried tea, a precious import, these works are curiosities of my own, inspired by food imports to the UK. Like agateware, the process of imitating precious stone in ceramic, evolved into its own style, these imitations have evolved into imitations of each other, incorporating different elements of these imports, and another style has emerged. These hybrids exist together as a collection of weird and wonderful, ambiguous curiosities.