JCAM, Vol. 2, No. 2
José Maria Mariscal JCAM: José Mariscal grew up around pottery. Today he excels as a primarily self-taught, highly successful and very contemporary ceramic artist. He comes from a family of traditional potters. His father was born in Coin, in the south of Spain, and later moved to live in La Bisbal d'Empordà a traditional pottery village in Catalonia. Mariscal began to learn the craft of throwing clay there when he was very young. Today Mariscal is well known for his crystalline glazes. Crystalline glazes are notoriously difficult to control and take a great deal of effort to bring to the public at a high level of craftsmanship. Learning to control and manage this technique has taken Mariscal many years. In order to perfect his practice of crystalline glazes he began with a conversation with his friend Peter Ilsley. He continued by practicing and researching techniques on his own. His experiments continue today. Many ceramic artists learn their craft in undergraduate and graduate programs in at institutions specializing in arts and crafts. It is accurate to suggest that Jose Maria Mariscal learned the basics of his craft from his father. Mariscal has lived with and worked in pottery since his childhood but has researched his own processes to discover the world of crystalline glazes, raku and other techniques and methods. The ceramic work of Jose Maria Mariscal blends traditional Spanish folk art with a strong influence of form and color from a number of international traditions. Even so, Mariscal is very much a traditional potter in the way he approaches his work and his studio experiments. In this way, his work has been his primary teacher, and he has never made pottery as part of a formal ceramics course. After working for many years with other ceramic artists and in various studios, in May 2003 José Mariscal opened his own studio. This studio has proven to be very successful. Now Mariscal Ceramics offers specialized ceramic products. One line of products features the latest fashion trends to sell mainly to other design shops. A second line features exclusive products for competitions, markets and exhibitions
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