peter marigold scratches away the surfaces of meissen porcelain vessels

peter marigold scratches away the surfaces of meissen porcelain vessels

peter marigold makes his mark on the vessels of german porcelain manufacturer meissen. invited by the more than 300-year-old company to collaborate on a series of containers, the british designer knew that he wanted to retain meissen’s history in the work that he would produce with them. rather than starting from scratch and developing a completely new line-up of products, he instead employed existing plaster moulds utilized by meissen craftsmen and worked from there to create a unique collection of bowls and cups.

‘cup 7’

marigold was fueled by the desire to make his own marks on the original meissen pieces and decided to scratch away at the finely modelled negative surfaces of the moulds to generate a textural ‘noise’. he would do this, cast the objects, and continue to carve away at the moulds. he repeated this process several times, scraping away at the plaster with deeper strokes, clawing into them and casting each subsequent excavation, testing the limit of the mould to the point of which it reached the margin of its usability.

‘cup 7’

the line-up of 14 unique designs is a display of marigold’s personal handmade marks, distorting the original forms of the vessels. the resulting objects present an ambiguity between creation and destruction — on the one hand aggressive, the designer making arbitrary indentations as if attacking the mould, however, when the negative is cast, the finished surfaces appear almost organic and tree-like in their presence.

‘cup 5’

‘cup 1’

the collection of seven cups with unique surface patterns by peter marigold

‘bowl 7’

‘bowl 7’

‘bowl 6’

‘bowl 1’

seven bowls each display a different surface pattern

underside of the bowls

meissen factory mark

3/4 profile

1/19