Gwyn Hanssen Pigott ( 1935 - 2013 )

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (1935-2013) was a superlative thrower and technician whose intelligence produced both richly glazed functional pieces, some large in scale, and later in her career, ambitious 'still life’ groupings of porcelain. She had a broad training, working with Ivan McMeekin in Australia and Bernard Leach, Ray Finch and Michael Cardew in England. She set up a pottery in Notting Hill in 1960, producing domestic ware and individual pieces before moving to France in 1966 and then back to Australia in 1973. A keen wood firer, it became in her hands a tool of refinement and nuance, of quiet surface enrichment, as towards the close of the 1980s she began to develop porcelain bowls and bottles assembled in increasingly complex formations and ‘cargoes’, partly inspired by the still life paintings of Morandi. This allowed her to explore interplays of form and colour; of creams, ochres, greens and light greys on complementary shapes and silhouettes, all glowing with translucency.

 David Whiting