THE HENRY HAMMOND LECTURE 2019 - GLENN ADAMSON: FEWER, BETTER THINGS
ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART, LONDON* | THURSDAY 7 MARCH 2019
In recent years, with the advent of the digital age, there is a risk that we are quite literally losing touch with the things in our lives. This decline in “material intelligence” is a problem - not just because we are becoming illiterate about our surroundings, but also because it prevents us from seeing the human connections that exist in objects made by others.
In this talk, Glenn Adamson will suggest ways to reconnect, using everyday pottery as his primary example. Ceramics, a medium intrinsically connected to the earth, is among our oldest repositories of human ingenuity and remains an artistically and technologically active eld to this day. From a morning cup of coffee to the most high-tech applications,learning about a material like clay is a way to keep ourselves grounded in the 21st century.
Dr Glenn Adamson is Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA. In addition, he is a sought after curator and writer, with ground breaking books in the eld of design and craft including seminal titlessuch as Thinking Through Craft and The Craft Reader. He was co curator and co editor (along with Martina Droth and Simon Olding) of the Yale exhibition Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery and curator of the acclaimed exhibition Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Fewer, Better Things is his latest book.
The lecture honours Henry Hammond (1914-1989). Hammond was born in Surrey and attended the Croydon School ofArt and then the Royal College of Art, where he took pottery classes under William Staite Murray. He was appointed as pottery instructor at the West Surrey College of Art and Design, taking up the post after the second world war. Hetaught there until 1980. He set up a studio, eventually in Bentley (shared from 1954 by Paul Barron), and was awardedthe MBE for service to ceramic education in 1980.
The Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, is delighted to present the 2019 Henry Hammond lecture in association with the Royal College of Art.
LECTURE: 4.00pm - 5.00pm | Lecture Theatre 1 (*RCA, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU)
TICKETS: £10.00 | student consessions apply.
Advanced booking is essential and can be made in person at the Crafts Study Centre, by calling 01252 891450 or emailing: craftscentre@uca.ac.uk
