“The Fruits of Her Labour”

Friederike Rahn

Friederike Rahn makes utilitarian tableware with strong decorative elements.  She works with both terra cotta and white earthenware clay bodies, with multiple layers of slips, terra sigillata, underglazes and coloured glazes.  She works back and forth between the potter’s wheel and the rolling pin, making forms which are generous, sometimes exaggerated and with densely detailed surfaces.

"A wall of cups is about one of the great pleasures of being a maker; watching the audience interact.  Like a carefully piled mound of apples in the market, it suggests abundance, vitality, fullness, nourishment, generosity.  There are familial resemblances, but on close examination, each one is unique.  Cups are my touchstone, a form to return to again and again.  They inform the other objects like sketches or maquettes.  They concentrate the language of volume and surface.

Decorating the surfaces is like planting a garden; respond to the terrain, layer textures, repeat colours and forms, make order and chaos play together."

~ Friederike Rahn, 2006

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