'Blue Form' by Wouter Dam, stoneware, 2003. Museum no. C.42-2004
COLLECTIONS
Ceramics
The V&A houses the greatest and most comprehensive
collection of Ceramics in the world. For the first time in
100 years, we are redisplaying this vast collection which
spans from 3500 BC to the present day. The collection
is particularly rich in Ceramics from Asia, the Middle
East and Europe.
Four years of refurbishment are now complete. Rooms
140 - 145 offer a comprehensive introduction to the world
of ceramics, featuring about 3,000 of the museum's finest
pieces. The remaining rooms display the rest of the
collection - around 26,000 pieces - as a study resource.
Read more about the refurbishment project.
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Ceramicist-in-Residence
The current Ceramics Artist in Residence is Phoebe Cummings. Phoebe received her Masters in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art, and has since undertaken several artist residencies in the UK, Greenland and USA. Her site-specific works explore the interplay between reality and fiction, and relationships between objects, landscape and place.
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About the Ceramics Galleries
This two-phased refurbishment project has created the most important national and international centre for the enjoyment, understanding and study of ceramics and a collection that is unrivalled anywhere in the world.
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Richard Slee: From Utility to Futility
Richard Slee is a renowned British artist who has built up an international reputation. For this display, he will present new works specifically for the two large wall cases and three free-standing cases in the Ceramics galleries. While Slee's primary medium remains ceramics, he has ventured into other materials, processes and subject matter. With characteristic irony, these latest works will explore such themes as the demise of male DIY and the shift in the crafts from items of everyday utility to autonomous art objects.
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Let Them Eat Clay!
Among the less familiar objects in the new Ceramics Galleries, perhaps the most curious and engaging is a group of polished clay vessels known as búcaros, which were made in the region around Tonalá in the Mexican state of Jalisco.