Sculpture and Ceramics in Britain and Europe 16th-18th Century by John Mallet

The speaker puts a case for reassessing and enjoying ceramic sculpture on its own merits alongside sculpture in marble, bronze or wood. He traces the idea, arising in Renaissance Italy and perpetuated by art academies, including the British Royal Academy, of a hierarchy of the visual arts from which tin-glazed earthenware sculpture, salt-glazed stoneware sculpture and porcelain figures were excluded as minor. He traces these hierarchical ideas from Alberti and Vasari to Sir Joshua Reynolds and illustrates some connections between recognised ‘fine art’ sculptors and the makers of ceramic sculpture, from the Della Robbia family in Renaissance Italy to the rare salt-glaze stoneware sculpture of John Dwight’s factory in Restoration London and to the mid-eighteenth century porcelain figures of Joseph Willems for Sprimont’s Chelsea porcelain factory and those of Agostino Carlini for Planché’s early Derby porcelain factory.

John Mallet FSA, FRSA, born in London in 1930. Educated Winchester College 1944-48; Balliol College, Oxford, 1950-54, Hon Fellow 1991; Ceramics and Works of Art Department, Sotheby’s London 1955-62; Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Ceramics and Glass, Assistant Keeper 1962-76, Keeper 1976-89; Independent Member of the Design Council’s Design Selection Committee 1981-89; Prime Warden of the Fishmongers’ Company, City of London 1983-84; Executive Committee, National Art Collections Fund 1989-2005; Wissenschafftlicher Beirat, Ceramica-Stiftung, Basel 1990-2020; Arts Advisory Panel, National Trust 1996-2005; President, English Ceramic Circle 1999-2009. Publications include: Xanto, Pottery Painter, Poet, Man of the Italian Renaissance, London, Wallace Collection, 2007; with F.A.Dreier, The Hockemeyer Collection of Ceramics and Glass, Bremen, 1998; Another Life, Poems by John Mallet, London, 2022; and many articles especially in Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, Faenza and The Burlington Magazine.