Cup and saucer c. 1924 - 1926

This is a cup and saucer made from Earthenware at the Waechtersbach Earthenware Factory, in Germany, but like, when, who knows? What strikes me is this rhythm of blue squares, like a syncopated pattern in a jazz solo. You can almost feel the hand moving, dot-dot-dot, around the rim. There's a real beauty in the handmade here, even if it was mass produced. The slight variations in each square tell a story. It’s not perfect; it’s human. And that’s what gets me thinking: the clay, fired and glazed. The colour itself, so simple. This dense, almost brutal application of the blue, and the way it interacts with the smooth, white surface. It feels like a conversation with artists like Agnes Martin, who were also interested in the grid, in repetition, in imperfection. It’s about looking at the world and finding these patterns, these rhythms, and just, like, laying them down. There’s more than one way to make a painting or a teacup, you know?