It can possibly be said that art pottery designs hold life experiences that are multi-sensory, multifaceted, and relate in complex ways to time, space, ideologies, and relationships with others. With respect to an Arts and Crafts pottery, the natural world around is of paramount importance. Each Moorcroft design starts life as a watercolour and then proceeds to a first trial design.
Occasionally, the designers vision of a watercolour seems perfect when viewed in its two dimensional form, but when translated into a three dimensional object, loses its gravitas or initial sensory experience. Inevitably, this can sometimes cause a designer to walk away from the trial or spend months and sometimes, even years, perfecting their vision. More often than not, however, design trials often go through minor tweaks in terms of colourway and perspective.
Perspective is all about relativity; when you pull back and look at the larger picture and take a different view, maybe things really are not so bad, or maybe there is a solution where it seemed elusive before. It may be that a discussion with Art Director, Elise Adams, creates a new perspective or a window of opportunity, to see things in a different light. In the art pottery world, perspective is about your vision, only this time, it is more spatial. Kerry Goodwin is a designer who has pin point accuracy when depicting the dimensions of animals and florals and on the occasions when she takes the observer out of worldly dimensions, she does so with a finesse that is perhaps unrivalled - you are taken on a journey into her own imagination or possibly even into an enlightened space.
Undoubtedly, Kerry is a designer who is most at home in the natural world, and her designs for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) are highly acclaimed. RSPB Minsmere certainly lives up to its reputation for being the crown jewel of the RSPB’s reserves. Located on the Suffolk coast, it is one of the richest wildlife sites in Eastern England, home to rare birds, mammals, butterflies, plants and other creatures great and small. For 75 years, visitors have heard the piercing shrill 'eeyah' of the marsh harriers as they swoop overhead. Last year, Kerry helped the reserves to celebrate its landmark 75th Anniversary with a Marsh Harrier design. In truth, this design caused an ‘eeyah’ of its own and is one of the design trials that will feature on a special trial page that will open on our website on the 9th April.
Whilst you will notice a rather special black door being opened, it is the design featured in this editorial that truly means something rather deep to the Moorcroft designer. She told me just before Easter how her own father had sat her and her brothers down each week, when they were at primary school, to study wildlife from an encyclopaedia. He explained to the young Kerry that although they lived in the industrial landscape of Stoke of Trent, that he was ‘from the country’ and wanted them to develop a love for the natural world. When asked why she had returned to daffodils again in a new trial design featuring spring flowers, Kerry told me a story that made me weep.
Not long before her father died, Kerry moved with her family from a terraced house in Stoke that did not have a garden, to a new house in Lightwood that had a garden. She recalled opening her bedroom window and seeing her father dig up the grass. She ran down stairs, and out into the garden, placing her little hands on his spade, and shouted ‘No Daddy, no. I love that grass, please don’t dig it up.’ Her father smiled fondly at her and said ‘just wait Kerry – you will be pleased.’ Months later when spring arrived, Kerry recalls looking out of her window at the daffodils beginning to bloom. She loved their heady scent, but most of all, their large, gloriously clothed golden heads that bring so much joy into our world. Even now, the designer told me, as we both sobbed unapologetically, I drive past that old house and see the daffodils and remember my father.
With encyclopaedic knowledge, Kerry made daffodils bloom on a very special Moorcroft vase, with their bulbs, unusually, showcased at the base of the vase, just as they should be. The vase is named, Bertie, Kerry’s father’s middle name. Hyacinth, tulips, and narrow cones of bluish-purple muscari join this uplifting design which reminds us all that new life flourishes when planted well. Hyacinths are spring-blooming bulbs with richly coloured flowers and an incredible fragrance that can perfume your entire garden. They bloom in mid-spring at the same time as daffodils and early tulips, and come in a rainbow of colours including white, cream, pink, rose, apricot, purple and blue. For Kerry, it was the hues of lavender, cobalt blue, and deep purple that contrast with the amber, burnt cinnamon and cadmium-reds of her tulips, which she envisaged when she decided to make her glorious spring bouquet, Bertie.
This week marks Kerry’s 23rd year at Moorcroft, a prolific designer who has created a generous selection of superb designs for collectors worldwide and continues to harness a clever grasp on all the elements that characterize a good design and a successful limited edition. Anyone who has ever met Kerry will be aware of her own booming laugh. Kerry is known to be a designer that favours a touch of humour in her designs, many of which are quirky, fun and cheerful, designed to make you smile, raise an eyebrow or laugh out loud in equal measure. Now back to that trial featuring a black door – I feel a limited edition of 10 might be on its way!