Anne Mette Hjortshøj

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drawings owe much to the ceramics of 15th and 16th century Korea — what we know as Bunchong. The Korean potters of that period made similarly childlike representations of grass, birds, plants et al through a white slip into a dark background clay body. Like her sometimes quirky sense of form, her placement of the drawing within the rectangular ‘canvas’ is often inspirational and achieves that indefinable sense of rightness we associate with artists of great note — Hockney for example where so much is conveyed with so little — where a line or a stabbed mark laid down with truth and experience can say more than a fussy and detailed drawing. So hard to do but the secret is to make it look easy and natural. I know from time I have spent in Korea with Anne Mette that her tea bowls meet with the most exacting scrutiny of the oriental aficionado. The thick and uncompromising Hakeme together with the warmth and subtlety of the salt glazed surface create a visual and tactile experience enough to warm the heart of any Japanese or Korean tea master. Her bowls are well respected in Korea and she has been invited and reinvited five years running to the Tea Bowl Festival in Mungyeong, South Korea. It is refreshing indeed to witness a potter who is not afraid to include within her oeuvre work that is overtly domestic. The idea that pots for cooking in or serving from can be as worthwhile as pieces obviously made with a more contemplative role seems, in recent years, to have been diminished. Anne Mette revels in the complexities of bringing

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