Product Details

Description: Sarah Thornton, after a painting by deaf American artist John Brewster 1820

Hand thrown plate, earthenware, tin-glazed Maiolica. 

Size approx: 17 x 17 x 1cm (6.7 x 6.7 x 0.4 inches)

(Please note this is an artist-made piece and not suitable for food use)

THE STORY

A British painter and ceramicist with a highly distinctive style, Michaela Gall is one of our long-time collaborators at The Shop Floor Project. She studied at Chelsea School of Art and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, where she honed her painterly style. Her work has been featured in many publications, and she has recently exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery. 

For many years Michaela Gall has used the form of the plate as a kind of diary or biography of references. Documenting events, travel, history, popular culture and everyday imagery, Gall may seemingly catch varied and disparate things in her artist’s net. However, looking back at the accumulation of her work, it is clear that she is actually capturing a certain spirit of our time. She is a storyteller.

Michaela Gall sees beauty and interest in everyday sights; a set of glass coffee cups on a table, a banana, an image of a pop star, a Tudor portrait, dancing tulips, a glass Coca Cola bottle.

The shape of the plates echoes these observations, adding sculptural dimensions to the work. There is a speed and such economy of line, capturing the fleeting moments Gall is so clever at capturing.

We have worked with Michaela Gall for many years at The Shop Floor Project. In fact, it was an exhibition of Michaela’s ceramics that opened our first gallery, and we have collected her work and collaborated on collections ever since. It has been a real thrill in recent years to see her work gaining acknowledgement in public spaces. From being commissioned to make almost two-hundred plates documenting paying playful homage to Soho's vibrant history, bohemian culture, food scenes, royalty, and cinematic past for permanent display at the Dear Jackie restaurant in the Soho Broadwick Hotel.

(James McDonald © Soho Broadwick Hotel)

And most recently, her painting Malcom was selected for the highly prestigious National Portrait Gallery’s annual Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award which ‘celebrates the very best in contemporary portraiture and is one of the most important platforms for portrait painters today. This year, 51 captivating portraits from around the world were selected for display in the exhibition.’