Float

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott is one of the most celebrated Australian potters of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born in Ballarat in 1935, she went on to train with Ivan McMeekin, at Sturt Pottery, Mittagong, New South Wales, between 1955 and 1957. In 1958 she moved to London, where she worked with the renowned potters, Ray Finch, Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew.

For much of her career Hanssen Pigott made functional small-scale vessels in a range of subtly toned celadon glazes, wheel-thrown in porcelain. She is best known for her grouped utilitarian vessel installations, arranged linearly, and influenced by the Italian still-life painter, Giorgio Morandi.  In Float, 2007, she has produced fifteen bowls and beakers in blue, green and cream hues, with the subtle differences in form and colour enhanced by the semi-translucent nature of porcelain and the gentle grouping and spacing of each piece, as dictated by the artist.

Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design