Paphos is a hive of industry for those at the wheel. NAN MACKENZIE meets four of a dying breed
Most people have a somewhat limited view of pottery/ceramics – they think potters either make things like mugs and ashtrays or they do sculpture. The fact is that in these austere times potters must be able to produce both functional pieces and also pieces of tangible, affordable art.
Soteroula Georgiades, Avgoustinos Kondos, Panicos Georgiades and George Georgiades are home-grown, talented, ceramic artists who between them create work that is utterly distinctive, with each offering a truly wonderful bridge between the exclusively functional and the exclusively non functional, proving that useful things should be beautiful and beautiful things should always be used.
Even so they work under a form of ‘materials’ snobbery as clay is often seen as a craft medium, with ambitious sculptors working with metal, stone, wood, even plastic, but clay? That’s considered just for modelling. Clay however is a visceral medium that easily betrays every single pinch, twist, and wink of its artist’s process.
The Paphos four have evolved their art form over many years, having experimented with everything in the clay lexicon, from crusty salt glazes to gleaming porcelain, creating classical urns, big full bosomed vases and wonderful oversized platters. Panicos is the ‘engineer’ of the group, having spent time abroad studying the complexity of ceramics. “I am fascinated by new shapes and designs and always want to create one off pieces, but we now have big problems with Chinese imports. Tourists take back souvenirs with designs that we created but that have actually been made in China. We have asked the government to help us halt this copying and importing, but we are still waiting, so we keep going as best we can, doing what we all love and that’s creating beautiful things.”
Soteroula shares a passion for pottery with husband George, delivering from their Lemba studio some quite beautiful pieces of hand-made and often edgy platters, plates and bowls. Her passion is obvious – it’s all to do with her talent for glorious glazes and simple understated designs.
George, himself, also offers hand-crafted pieces that are both aesthetic and functional. His art has an almost Zen-like simplicity of balance and style. But is the role of master potter dying out? “I worry that we will all soon disappear, it’s hard to compete in a market where people see crockery, vases and platters as purely functional items, seeking out only the cheapest, or others who opt for expensive, imported, factory made brands. All we want to do is to be able to make our art and have people appreciate it enough to have it in their homes”.
Avgoustinous works out of a large studio/shop in Yeroskipou and is the one in the group whose personality, instinctive talent and sheer spirit for life is sometimes at odds with his business: “I have to carry a lot of work that appeals to tourists so the shop displays reflect that need, and although I’d love to fill the place with my work that would be the road to disaster, so I have to limit the amount of original work I can make and that’s quite frustrating. But I get up every day and want to throw a special pot and as long as I can still do it I will, it’s as necessary as breathing to me”.
How many of us will actually seek out and appreciate the pleasure of owning a piece of work that has been handcrafted by local artists, for this is part of the huge problem facing our potters. Chinese imported goods are slowly but surely killing their livelihood and if we don’t make an effort to support them then the day will come when they will have all but disappeared. The plea has to be to make a visit to Savvas Pottery, Lemba, and Avgostinos pottery shops where, after having moved past the purely tourist gift offerings, you can make for the ‘real stuff’ which will invariably sit pride of place on a separate display area.
Our potters do have to regularly sing for their suppers, making goods that will primarily sell to tourists, small trinkets they can easily transport home, but that side of the business cannot fully support the cost of running a kiln far less the rent rates and other overheads of running a pottery studio.
Like any tenor, these four potters have spent most of their lives trying to attain a form of perfect pitch, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t, but there is one difference between the final results of music and pottery and that is the pot is a tangible object, almost like music frozen in a moment of time, it sits there, this beautifully formed gesture, hand-made by one person from what began as a lump of dull clay.
Avgoustinos Pottery, Yeroskipou, Tel: 99 568726, www.avgoustinospottery.com;
Savvas Pottery, Yeroskipou, Tel: 26 960804, www.savvas-pottery.com;
George &Soteroula Georgiades, Lemba www.lembapottery.com
