Cherry Tewfik
Cherry Tewfik
Cherry has been a potter for over forty years.
Of Egyptian descent, she developed the unique forms, decorations and colours of her ceramics through life and work among the inspiring potters of North and East Africa, Singapore and Malaysia. In the early 1980s she established pottery workshops in collaboration with the museum in Pekan and with the British Council. Here Cherry taught and learned about form and methods of pattern making with local materials. She continues to use a fine iron bearing clay dug from her back garden in Malaysia 30 years ago to contrast with the patterning on her white porcelain pots.
Today with studios in central France and Canterbury Cherry concentrates on ceramics which use the ancient Japanese technique of Raku, where white-hot pots are lifted from the kiln and either plunged, hissing and steaming into sawdust and water or presented with horsehair, leaves and other combustibles to fuse with the body of the pot. The results from this rapid cooling and immersion in carbonising materials are unpredictable and unrepeatable. The finished pieces with their carefully incised patterns, vivid colours and pure shapes celebrate the evidence of their stressful birth in the surface crackle, pits and accidents characteristic of this process.
Recent work is based on ovoid and spherical raku, porcelain and stoneware forms developed into simplified faces and bodies inspired by Modigliani, ostrich eggs, Easter Island sculptures and Gormleys’ multiple figures. The different effects and wide range of colours and surfaces celebrate human cultural diversity.
Each year Cherry organises 60 volunteer potters to teach in the Canterbury Throwdown, a two week community pottery event in October as part of The Canterbury Festival. Some 750 visitors yearly are able to experience the joy of creating a pot with expert tuition at no charge.
Cherry’s pots are found in private collections throughout the UK and in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Edinburgh, Belfast, Vancouver, Geneva, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Perth, Sidney, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
Cherry has been a potter for over forty years.
Of Egyptian descent, she developed the unique forms, decorations and colours of her ceramics through life and work among the inspiring potters of North and East Africa, Singapore and Malaysia. In the early 1980s she established pottery workshops in collaboration with the museum in Pekan and with the British Council. Here Cherry taught and learned about form and methods of pattern making with local materials. She continues to use a fine iron bearing clay dug from her back garden in Malaysia 30 years ago to contrast with the patterning on her white porcelain pots.
Today with studios in central France and Canterbury Cherry concentrates on ceramics which use the ancient Japanese technique of Raku, where white-hot pots are lifted from the kiln and either plunged, hissing and steaming into sawdust and water or presented with horsehair, leaves and other combustibles to fuse with the body of the pot. The results from this rapid cooling and immersion in carbonising materials are unpredictable and unrepeatable. The finished pieces with their carefully incised patterns, vivid colours and pure shapes celebrate the evidence of their stressful birth in the surface crackle, pits and accidents characteristic of this process.
Recent work is based on ovoid and spherical raku, porcelain and stoneware forms developed into simplified faces and bodies inspired by Modigliani, ostrich eggs, Easter Island sculptures and Gormleys’ multiple figures. The different effects and wide range of colours and surfaces celebrate human cultural diversity.
Each year Cherry organises 60 volunteer potters to teach in the Canterbury Throwdown, a two week community pottery event in October as part of The Canterbury Festival. Some 750 visitors yearly are able to experience the joy of creating a pot with expert tuition at no charge.
Cherry’s pots are found in private collections throughout the UK and in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Edinburgh, Belfast, Vancouver, Geneva, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Perth, Sidney, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
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