Provenance

The Ceramic Collection of Late Professor Juliet Armstrong (1950 - 2012)

Literature

For Juliet, illustrated on page 93.

“Juliet regarded ceramic sculpture using mainly translucent ceramic materials as a defining aspect of her work. The white translucent body was a very important aspect of these sculptures and the technical component of her research was devoted largely to devising a translucent bone china. She worked with bone china for just over thirty years from the late 1970’s but it became very costly to purchase the raw materials in South Africa. She did import some mixed casting slip but became determined to make up a body using suitable South African materials that could replace the expensive imported products and to develop a medium that suited her own particular needs. 

After conducting many tests and working with the medium she developed a body that consisted of local and imported materials which, in its fired state, emulates the hardness, whiteness and translucency of the European version. In her research she found that it was possible to use animal-feed grade tri-calcium phosphate (which she could source locally) instead of the imported bone ash which is normally put into the body. This cut down considerably on the cost of making bone china. 

In her Black Spot series the translucent cone forms are placed on a structure made of clay with a corrugated surface. She made clay pieces on a Plaster of Paris bat cast on corrugated cardboard. To emphasise the contrast between the fragile cone and the form that holds it she used terracotta clay with a manganese wash (a mixture of manganese and copper oxides). It is characteristic of her work that she used the materials to emphasise the difference between the vessel and the sculptural form”.¹ 

1. 
Michelle Rall cited in Brendan Bell and Bryony Clark (eds) For Juliet: Ceramic Sculptor 1950 - 2012. Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, page 37 - 39.