Trine Ribert
Thoughts around craft, inspiration and work processes.
I often get inspiration for my ceramic design in the actual process of the clay. From the clay, it is cut, kneaded, shaped and slapped down on the turntable..then it all starts..
Maybe I had an idea before, a sketch, a photo from a place, an exhibition, nature, a flea market.. one of my old forms, or just a desire to follow this path, this day… The dialogue with others around me things, also inspires new ideas and the interplay between form, color, function and design.
A starting point for my design has been my friend’s beautiful green vase from a flea market a long time ago.. The shape, the grooves, the color… led me on the trail of the classic potters. Bowls from a flea market, become the starting point for my 123 cups…A pitcher in a prehistoric museum in Istanbul, become the starting point for my pitchers..
The form comes into being and out of it new forms are created, perhaps leading back to the first, which then yet cannot be completely recreated… a circular spiral process. Processes that take me off familiar roads, with bumps and steep hills, important detours like confuses and inspires. Stands where time and space flow together, where the body and the hands take over in the dialogue, the play and the fight with clay, water and the eternal rotating disk.
The craft is a part of the body throughout the process. Centering is essential to the entire turning process and is complemented by various techniques and moves. The final form is planned in the process through the work of the hands with the wet form.
Turning, scraping and finishing the leather-hard shape is important for my design. Here, lines and patterns are tightened and the form takes on its own form expression and the final finish. After this there is a drying process, annealing,
glazing and glaze firing.
I choose the glaze from my own glaze mixtures and ready-mixed glazes. Some of my glazes are mixes between different glazes based on experiments and thorough knowledge of what the glazes can do on the different types of clay.
The glaze firing is the last decisive part of the process, here anything can happen:
What you expect, what shouldn’t happen and the completely magical, what you might not expected, but which turned out to be absolutely fantastically beautiful. A magic that might repeat themselves in the unpredictable glaze firing, where a lot is at stake..
