Rhiannon Batten speaks to the Cumbria-based ceramicist about using his political voice, shattering expectations and reimagining the classics
HEIRLOOMS OF THE FUTURE
The Decommissioning Series; Cumbrian Blue(s) Fukushima No:8.
Paul Scott started subverting transferware 30 years ago. Having always loved ‘these blue and white landscapes that you could immerse yourself in’, the Cumbria-based ceramic artist made a piece satirising Spode’s Blue Italian, putting Sellafield nuclear power plant in the distance instead of picturesque ruins. That first gentle tease became a lifelong journey, he says, noting that ‘transferware is such a rich field’.
Scott’s work often frames wider social issues through a local lens. The Sellafield pieces remind us that the countryside is more than fells and fields, as does a more recent depiction of post-lockdown traffic jams in the Lake District; while a tea set commemorating the tragedy of the Chinese cockle pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay draws attention to modern-day slavery.
This might sound radical, but his work is the continuation of a long tradition; antique transferware often appears innocuous on the surface, but serious political messages hide among its weeping willows and oriental florals.
Emerging in Staffordshire in the late 18th century as a more affordable, mass-produced alternative to hand-painted Chinese porcelain, or Delftware, transferware is produced by applying patterns to pottery through the transference of a print from a copper plate to paper and, from there, to a plate or vessel. Beginning with Chinese styles, British makers soon branched out into European scenes and motifs and, then, to designs targeted at foreign markets – not least the proud new American nation.
Look closely, and many of these pieces contain messages of support for issues such as women’s suffrage or the abolition of slavery (the latter often appearing, ironically, on tea sets, specifically designed to be used with the spoils of slave labour).
Today, ranges such as Hannah Coles’ ‘Brexitware’ and Michelle Erickson’s ‘Trumped Up China’ demonstrate transferware’s potential for contemporary political messaging. Chief among the genre’s contemporary proponents, though, is Scott, who reanimates 19th-century and early 20th-century transferware, making his own decals and transferring them onto antique pottery.
‘Although to some people antique transferware pieces are innocent decorative objects, they tell a particul
