Slipware Against Franco: Ceramic Trends During the Spanish Civil War
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| Thanks to English Pottery |
Author: not known
Publisher: not known
Source book: The Portable Door by Tom Holt
Sophie Pentengell, apprentice wizard at JW Wells & Co, is having a fling with performance ceramicist (definitely not performance potter) Shaz who lives in an old bus in a field near Esher. Shaz began pottery when he was in prison, he then spent a couple of years in North Africa with a tribe of Tuareg nomads, and six months learning to be a shaman in Finland. He now produces anarcho-socialist ceramics as a performance art. Sophie tells us Shaz is hoping to go to New Guinea where apparently there’s a really exciting tradition of conceptual ceramics but he needs a Lottery grant to fund his trip.
Sophie thinks his work is pretty amazing but she can’t bring herself to approve of Shaz’s desire to monetise his art. The relationship isn’t going that well and she tries to read Slipware Against Franco to better understand… but puts the book away after five minutes.
I imagine this to be a lavishly illustrated volume about the importance of pottery in the Spain of General Franco. Lots of large brown and cream slipware pots or jars decorated with political slogans perhaps, and biographies of the potters. Why not? Unfortunately not much is known about this little known pottery contribution to political activism.
If you google ceramics performance art you can see it is actually a thing. Possibly not your sort of thing, but who knows?
[Spoiler alert] Shaz turns out to be a goblin called George. Sophie is so not impressed at this revelation.
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