Emilie Taylor in Emerging Potters Magazine

“When once Thomas Toft’s slip-trailed images celebrated kings, queens, and the gentry, Emilie Taylor frames graphic images of life on the fringes of society, drawing from the urban landscape and its inhabitants.” - Penny Withers, Ceramic Review

 

“Emilie Taylor craftily infiltrates pottery’s decorative charm with hints of political dissent.” - Robert Clark, The Guardian

The Sacraments takes as it’s starting point the wise or healing women that would have been part of every village or town. (16/17C)

Their medicinal knowledge of plants an herbs would have taken care of the community in every capacity from illness to birth control. Alongside their herb gardens the common land would have been a source of ingredients and inspiration.

The knowledge and power these women possessed (both in the community in general and regarding their perceived ability to control population with birth control), was perceived as a threat to the move to land enclosure and a patriarchal society with a more capitalist focus needing women to stay at home and reproduce the work force.

The rise of the ‘Witch Hunts’ across Europe in this period is seen by some (Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch) as a tool of propaganda used by King and Church to terrorise women and targeted women in these positions, (amongst others).

These plates celebrate these women and their knowledge, and use a contemporary model.

These pieces use copper carbonate in the line instead of the oxide I used previously. The verdant green connects with the land and I like its more ‘fluid’ quality, it feels like moss or lichen growing and permeating the urban/ concrete landscape.

The copper is a more ‘volatile’ material than the oxide, so it reacts with the other materials in the kiln. This causes changes in the lustre where the edges meet the copper, and gives the aged pattina look, softening the lustre and giving the pieces the feel of an older artefact.

These pieces are developments from the time spent working with the National Civil War Centre in Newark and their collections. They are the most recent pieces. I made large pots for the show there using the oxides, then began using the copper on drawings on plates and felt inspired to begin using it on the bigger pieces.

The works focus on the women of the 16-17C, and are a response to how land enclosure and the move to a capitalist society impacted on womens role then and now. They celebrate womens knowledge, connection to the landscape and their activism during the period.

"The Latin and Italian are Chants or slogans used in the period to protest the way society was changing, the french was a chant used in the period to denigrate women and therefore support what was happening by those trying to enforce new attitudes. I have used that particular slogan as I think it is demonstrative of woman’s unique strengths and see it as celebratory. More context can be found in Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici.

I wanted to use slogans from across Europe, particularly as we face increasing separation from our fellow European’s, to demonstrate that the issues the work addresses- famine, enclosure and persecution and murder of women- were happening across Europe.

The shape of the pots for me is influenced by four things- agriculture, (its shape and rolled sack like top), a torso, a stone circle and a protest placard (hence the writing on the back)." - Emilie Taylor

An essay about the research and the work by Sara Read (Author and academic at Loughborough University) is available.

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Emilie Taylor uses heritage crafts, particularly traditional slipware, to interpret and represent post-industrial landscapes. Emilie is interested in the vessel or container as a metaphor for how we seek to contain communities, and community rituals, within British society, and has an ongoing interest in the firing process as alchemically potent and symbolic of change. 

 

Her work offers new interpretation to the contemporary urban context and its severance with ties to past community rituals. Large pieces and installations blur the boundaries between Gallery and Museum, Fine Art and the anthropological elements of Craft.

 

Emilie Trained in Fine Art (BA hons First Class) at Liverpool John Moores, graduating 2001 and has a Masters in Art Psychotherapy that informs her ideas about the anthropological significance of making in communities and community ritual. She has lectured about her practice at the Royal College, Cheltenham Literature Festival, on behalf of Arts Council England and the Crafts Council. As well as at many universities and art institutions.

Emilie has completed residencies in the UK and abroad, and has exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Ruthin Craft Centre, Gallery Oldham, and the Arts & Crafts House Blackwell. She had a solo exhibition (Tubthumping) which opened on March 8th 2023 at the National Civil War Centre. The body of work included in the show took as a subject the experiences of women in the early modern period and explored the similarities linking them and the experiences of women today. Her work forms part of public and private collections. In addition, Cynthia Corbett Gallery & its not-for-profit art initiative Young Masters Art Prize were invited by the Michelangelo Foundation to feature Emilie Taylor's artwork in their inaugural Homo Faber exhibition in Venice during the Biennale d'Arte in April 2022.

In 2024 Emilie will be working with Bradford Museums to create new pieces for their collection and will also be working with the Stradling collection in Bristol to respond to the slipware ceramics of Sam Haile held in their collection. Both projects will culminate in exhibitions later in the year.

She will also be leading an ongoing project with women exiting the criminal justice system who will be creating ceramic work for exhibition in 2025.