About

“He is now making some of the most significant lustre pieces to have been produced since Aldermaston Pottery closed”. – (Jane White, author Alan Caiger-Smith and the Legacy of Aldermaston Pottery, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 2018)

O’Connell Gallery is delighted to present a selection of new and recent lustre ceramics by Mark Campden. The exhibition will include a variety of skilfully accomplished forms that demonstrate his mastery of brushwork and all the richness, subtleties and alchemical properties of the ‘Reduced-Pigment Lustre’ technique. This technique is an historical method of decorating pottery that dates back as far as 9th century Abbasid Iraq, and which spread westwards through the Islamic world, reaching Spain in the late Medieval period, and subsequently having a strong influence on the production of Italian maiolica. The technique has enjoyed sporadic revivals over the centuries, for example in the Arts & Crafts designs of William De Morgan and, notably, at the Aldermaston Pottery in Berkshire, a progressive craft enterprise founded by Alan Caiger-Smith, which fostered community and learning. It was here where Mark’s father, Edgar Campden, worked for over 30 years and whose notes on lustre practices were gifted to Mark after his death.

It involves the application of pigments made of dissolved silver and copper compounds in an iron-bearing clay slip carrier, followed by a carefully controlled reduced wood-firing. If the firing is successful, a thin film of lustre is fixed at the glaze surface. After the firing the clay carrier is washed off and the lustre is revealed.

Mark Campden is one of very few makers internationally, working in a long tradition of those who have sought to master the lustre technique and achieve its prized, elusive and shimmering metallic surfaces.