Georg Jensen

Perhaps I have just not noticed before but many of the stands this year included clocks. Families of my grandparents’ generation seemed to make do with one good clock on the mantle shelf above the fireplace and alarm clocks in the bedroom but otherwise everyone, including young children, had watches. Then, through the 1950s and 1960s there seemed to be a massive expansion of type and choice of clock particularly in the kitchen where most homes had a wall clock and many an egg timer and a‘pinger-timer’ - before clocks or timers on ovens became common - and my mother also had a clock radio she listened to while she worked in the kitchen … one of those where the numerals flipped over although eventually that was replaced by one with a luminous atomic-green display where seven bars forming a squared off figure 8 were turned on or off to form weirdly blocky numbers. I guess all those clocks reinforced the idea that actually the kitchen was the control centre for most working homes. Then with mobile phones and clocks and alarms on iPads and laptops, it became easier and easier to do without clocks and watches although from the number of new clocks shown at northmodern it looks as if they are making a comeback.

It was interesting, so soon after meeting several of the ceramicists behind Den Danske Keramikfabrik, to see the work of more from the group at Finderskeepers at TAP1 last weekend including Birgitte Ran Bennike Mayall and Tina Marie Bentsen.

In fact, pottery and ceramics and ceramic sculpture were well represented at the event so it was possible to see just what a wide range of styles and forms and colours are possible in ceramics.

Works included among others the crisp, white, faceted vases by Dorte Kjettrup and Susanne Holmvang of Piece of Denmark; the tightly folded works, almost like textiles but in porcelain, by Helene Søs Schjødts or the translucent vases decorated with fern fronds or leaf studies by the same artist; the tablewares of Birgitte Ran Bennike Mayall, Mette Duedahl and Kristina Vildersbøll or the studies in deep concentrated colour from Tina Marie Bentsen.

For many ceramicists, having a stall or display at a design fair for the public, rather than at a trade fair, is an important way to reach a much wider audience and possibly slightly different audience to the customers who might visit a studio or a gallery.