Product Details

Handmade white earthenware bough pot, hand painted with underglaze colours with white slip decoration and a transparent gloss glaze

Size: 12.5 cm high, 18cm wide and 9cm deep

THE STORY

Emily Mitchell | Scenes in Miniature

A new collection of work by British ceramicist Emily Mitchell explores the world of miniature painting within pottery.

The Scenes in Miniature collection features a series of hand thrown plates and bough pots each one painted with a miniature scene or character within a cartouche of slipware dots. The exquisite paintings appear as mysterious figures or scenes from a play or a novel, a narrative that changes with the placement and arrangement of each piece.  

With this new collection, Emily wanted to ‘invite the viewer to make connections, perhaps from stories half-remembered or books from childhood.The figures of performers, highwaymen, wild animals and hedgerow birds are characters but with their meaning or significance lost to history, waiting to be recast as part of a new narrative.’

Each painting is set within the most beautifully made ceramic object. The plates are hand-thrown and dipped in the darkest treacle or milkiest of white glazes and finished with slipware patterns and little coloured dots here and there. 

The new Bough Pots are a collaboration with The Shop Floor Project and are inspired by the 17th century English Bough Pots, which Emily has ingeniously developed into her own contemporary versions.

(Above: V&A Museum: Bough Pot and Cover ca.1795 Museum number C.222B&C-1986)

The Bough Pot is a clever design, a flat backed, domed front vessel with a lid pierced with holes to hold flowers, it sits perfectly on a mantlepiece or shelf. Two put back to back make a striking central table piece and arrange with flowers or single specimens.

Emily’s Bough Pots are skilfully hand-built, elevated with mouldings and raised slightly with bun feet.

This is a collection with one foot in the past and another asking us to invent, to narrate a future story.