Priscilla Mouritzen – Red Lodge Clay Center

Priscilla MouritzenHolte, Denmark


Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident 2013

Priscilla Mouritzen was born in Cape Town, South Africa and attended the School of Art in Durban before setting up her own ceramic studio in England in 1968. She spent a decade in England before moving to Denmark where she has lived and worked since. She shows internationally, and also travels as a visiting artist in studios around the world.

Mouritzen has exhibited widely in Europe and is a board member of the Guldagergaard Ceramic Centre, Skælskør Denmark. She is a regular participant in seminars and conferences on ceramics.

“The Intimate Object”

Most of my current work is hand built – often “pinched.”
This most basic of techniques, with its in-built size limitation (the span of one’s hand, or, as far as one’s fingers can reach) gives a fixed starting point from where I am able to explore an infinite number of variations on a theme.
All the pinched bowls are more or less the same size – the only rule is that the decoration on the inside is repeated on the outside, changing in interesting ways whether applied to the convex or concave surface.
Small round pots are made up from two pinched bowls, joined in the middle.
The work shows all the variety and movement which porcelain clay gives when it is fired really high in a wood kiln, all the colour and flashing which the play of flame and deposit of ash gives. The innate “pinched” quality gives the surface liveliness.
The works show an exploration of pattern in which echoes can be found of my South African background.