info@studio-pots.com	Harlequin Gallery
Svend Bayer A solo exhibition of the best pots from his last five firings 10th September to 1st October 2006
A STATEMENT FROM SVEND Last summer I rashly pulled down both my kilns. There was nothing wrong with them and they could probably have seen me out .In retrospect pulling them down signalled a change. It seemed that something had come to an end and that I now needed a different approach. The problem was (is) that I had no idea what that approach might be. In their places I built my smallest kiln yet; a very pretty, curvaceous 75 cubic foot kiln in which I tried to incorporate some of the best features of the many kilns which had preceded it. It works well and is a pleasure to fire. Best of all it is small enough for me to be able to experiment. If I lost an entire kiln load it would be bad but not the end of the world. I have lost the entire contents of an 800 cubic foot kiln more than once and that is a very different kind of horse to remount. The pots in this exhibition are the best of the first five firings. I still fire a lot of unglazed pots and shinos but am also pushing what happens to my celadon when it is fired for a very long time and gets heavily ashed and turns into a Jun. Another feature of these firings has been cooling in reduction. In the past that has simply meant filling the kiln with wood at the end of the firing, closing everything down and letting it get on with it. The last firing produced pots which indicated that this process can be far more controlled. That is the beauty of this small kiln. I have learnt more from it in a year than from years and years of firing very big kilns. On the back of this experience I am now planning my next biggish kiln; a 250 cubic foot version of my small kiln. Something to see me through the next 10 years perhaps.
The work below is photographed showing the side that Svend prefers – but be warned if you are impressed then the other side is often even better! Updated with unsold work on 15th September.
No.9: Heavily ashed jar - celadon with shells. Height: 33.0cm (13.0”)	No.12: Heavily ashed bottle - shino with shells. Height: 36.8cm (14.5”)
No.58: Squared teabowl ashed shino. Height: 8.9cm (3.5”) Diameter: 11.4cm (4.5”)	No.26: Narrow bottle – unglazed with heavy ashing and wad marks. Height: 21.0cm (8.25”) NOW SOLD
No.28: Unglazed bottle – heavily ashed with wad marks. Height: 19.1cm (7.5”) NOW SOLD	No.25: Ashed celadon bottle. Height: 16.25cm (6.4”) NOW SOLD
No.15: Unglazed Pitcher with heavy ashing and shells. Height: 34.3cm (13.5”)	No.17: Unglazed jar with running ash. Height: 27.3cm (10.75”)
No.29: Heavily ashed bottle – reduced shino with shells. Height: 19.1cm (7.5”)	No.37: Ashed shino teapot. Height (to the top of handle): 19.1cm (7.5”)
Svend Bayer, who was described by Michael Cardew as “a force of nature ………. and easily his best pupil” returns to the Harlequin Gallery this September for his fourth solo exhibition with a whole new body of work from his two large cross-draught wood firing kilns. Although the exhibition will include work of all sizes, people tend to associate Svend with large pots. It is fair to say that travels to the Far East, early in his career, where he saw large Korean and Burmese Maraban storage jars influenced him so much that he wanted to replicate these, resulting in him building a very large kiln upon his return to the UK. Today he fires much less than he used to using smaller kilns but with a longer firing process than in his early days. These longer firing periods lead to more complex interactions between the clay body, the ash from the wood and the scallop shells that he uses to separate the pots in the kiln. The resulting patina of the pots varies from matt to shiny, colour from candescent red to an intricate blue-grey. Typically it takes around three and a half days for the kiln to reach temperature. Following this is a two day period of adding wood to maintain that temperature and a four day cooling down period before the kiln can be opened and the resulting pots inspected. The process will have destroyed some of the kiln’s content and Svend will smash more, leaving the work that he is happy for us to enjoy and, if we wish, buy. I hope that you will be able to come along to see this work either at the Private View on Sunday 10th September, when Svend will be present, or before the exhibition closes at the beginning of October. As the art critic and historian, Tanya Harrod, stated in her essay about Svend’s work last year “the results are subtle and demand our complete attention, for these are some of the most arresting pots of our time”.
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