Earthenware

Earthenware

Earthenware is a collective effort between different collaborating artists who strive to explore significant cities in the Hanseatic League.

- Lübeck, Germany

- Hamburg, Germany

- Cologne, Germany

- Dortmund, Germany

- Braunschweig, Germany

- Skane, Sweden

- Visby, Sweden

- Gdańsk, Poland

Each city has been carefully chosen due to its historical significance within the Hanseatic League and have played an integral part in the building and maintaining of the League.

The Hanseatic League was officially established in 1358 and has a left a rich history not only of economic trade, and mutual political interest, but it was an interesting way of uniting European countries. All cities diverse in habits and landscape worked towards a single goal, unity.

This is what we want to explore and why Earthenware holds importance. It is an interesting new take on one of Europe’s oldest institutions, and with the upcoming Hanzedagen Festival in June 2017 we can think of no better time and method of paying homage to this important tradition. https://www.hanze2017.nl/nl/

We chose to make crockery specifically because we feel that it connects people through one of our most primal urges: eating. Using locally sourced clay from each city, only enforces this feeling of connectedness, as there will literally be a part of the city itself in every piece of crockery we make. The crockery will be foodscapes that are shaped to share. In addition to the crockery, we chose varying ways to document and capture the making of the crockery. The multi-media aspect of this project adds another element of unification and diversity at the same time, in the sense that we are using different ways to look at the same thing.

In the end, Earthenware is about celebrating and acknowledging a longstanding institution by giving it a fresh and accessible new twist. Since our world is now more connected than ever before, we want to remember the time when this was one of the most important institutions connecting Europe. This is what we want to celebrate, being unified and connected despite our differences.

We ask your help and support to visit, design and experience these differences and similarities.