We’re delighted to share this new exhibition of pots by Jean-Nicolas Gérard, a slipware potter from Provence in France. With a glaze palette of golden yellows and browns, white, blue, and black, Jean-Nicolas makes beautiful, functional earthenware pots, almost all of which are designed to be used in the garden or the kitchen for the cooking and presenting of food.
Jean-Nicolas Gérard was born in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1954 and his family returned to France in 1961. He started studying ceramics in 1978 and was Jean Biagini’s student at École des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence. He also trained with Claire Bogino. Gérard has gained international acclaim and exhibitions of his pots have been staged around the globe, including America, Australia, China and Japan.
He is one of those rare potters who brings genuine life and gusto to contemporary slipware, investing the tradition of terre vernissée with a fresh and expressive energy unlike any other. Many think that Gérard’s work has a spontaneity that so many others can only wish for.
‘To use the pots of Jean-Nicolas Gérard is to celebrate the centrality of food in human culture and, in our industrially mediated world, to be reminded of its importance in nourishing the mind and spirit as well as the body.’ Sebastian Blackie.
