SUMMER CERAMICS WORKSHOP | Polytechnic of Leiria, Portugal

ESAD.CR will promote Portuguese Ceramics NOW!, an intensive ceramics workshop, during the last week of July.

Information, programme and registration form is available here:

Portuguese Ceramics NOW!

Join us for this international ceramic experience!

Framing the subject:

The work on ceramic and pottery in Portugal is an ancestral, atavistic and transversal practice. Preserved as discipline and technique within the production of both, contemporary art and traditional culture, the art of ceramic exposes the social and cultural evolution of the country.

Prior to the foundation of Portugal as a nation (in 1143), the use of ceramics in Iberian Peninsula reveal the multitude of people and traditions that have settled in the region through time. From the domestic and utilitarian routine to artifacts of worship and art, to the architectural performance as material, the use of ceramic echoes different techniques and technical knowledge, from erudite, to popular and practical. The rich Portuguese culture of ceramics, with more than 1000 years of history, is a starting point to address the subject from multiple angles.

The School of Arts and Design of Caldas da Rainha (ESAD.CR) is strategically located in a region characterized by the presence of clay, ceramist studios and industrial mass production of Ceramics. This nature defines today the role of the city and the school in particular, as an incubator for ideas and creation in disciplines of design and ceramic work. In addition, the school has been pursuing partnership and ventures with training centers, research networks, local firms and municipalities who focus their economic and social development in the tradition of ceramics.

Within this context the ESAD.CR will conduct a set of workshops here presented as an opportunity to explore ancestral techniques and language, as well as the plasticity and the symbolic and cultural values of the material. The overlap of these, together with a genuine interest in sharing knowledge aims to physically expose the participants to some of the most bizarre techniques which allowed for the persistence of an active contemporary practice in Portugal. Beyond the utilitarian and functional meaning of the ceramic production of artifacts, this workshop will allow participants to engage in discourses of 'language’, 'material’, 'technique’ and 'object / artifact’ apart from the current tendencies of merging the discipline with the ambitious fields of digital fabrication and ‘tech’ entrepreneurship. As alternative to such ‘tendencies’, the workshop will revisit narratives of creation and innovation exposing the work of students and professors through different influences: from the historical narrative to the contemporary role of the Ceramics in Design, Arts and Architecture.