October 07, 2024 · By Kate Hawkins

MANIFESTO FOR MOCHAWARE

For the launch of our new Mochaware collection of wallpapers, borders and fabrics, artist Kate Hawkins wrote some words about how it all came together. We thought it might be fun to share them...

This collection has taken a little longer than most. It’s been wheeling about my head for the past four years, but getting it onto paper, or in some cases fabric, was another thing entirely.

Of course, the name 'mochaware' originally came from pottery. It was a style of decoration that began in Staffordshire in the 1770s, which used slip (a fluid clay) to decorate fine creamware and pearlware sometimes in combination with geometric patterns created by an engine-turning lathe. By the early 1790s these alkaline slip surfaces were being further decorated with an acidic tea mixture made up of stale urine, vinegar, turpentine, or tobacco infusion. The acid would react with the alkaline at the point of contact causing tree-like patterns (dendrites) to form. The dendrites were thought to resemble the natural geological markings on moss agate, also known as 'mocha stone'. This semi-precious gemstone was named after the Yemeni city of Mocha (Al Mukha), once a major exporter of the stone to England.

I became interested in mochaware not just because of its glorious decorative possibilities but also because of what it represented. The pottery was mass-produced, utilitarian and by 1814 inexpensive to make: it was democratic. There was nothing elite about it and as such it was ubiquitous in pubs and taverns across the country. It was made to be used, and in many cases abused, which is why much of today’s mochaware has chips and cracks and oh-so-many stories to tell.

I tend to think of mochaware, both in its design but also application, as a pottery of contrast, but even more than that, one of connection. In any other world these madcap motifs: the cat’s eye, the tree, the dipped fan, the looping earthworm, the trailed slip or just the plain band should have no place near each other, let alone all together on the same object, but somehow it succeeds. Even the name Mocha, from a semi-precious stone in a faraway land to a common-clay mug in a local hand, connects two things that shouldn’t rightly belong. And it does this in a way that’s quite unusual. Each time you look at a mochaware piece you feel as if you are seeing something new, something unexpected. This might be because no one mug, bowl or tankard is ever the same. All are their own improbable combinations of skill, slip, heat and chance.

This of course was the challenge when designing a collection of wallpapers and fabrics which by their essence have elements that repeat. So just like the pottery it needed to become very much about process. The cloth bases were carefully chosen to be as utilitarian as possible and the one woven jacquard combines two motifs that shouldn’t really work together: free-form squiggles with static stripes using only fine woven lines to describe them – not an easy or quick task to either draw or develop. I also spent quite a long time working out how the cat’s eye markings were originally made using slip and then attempted to imitate that process with paint. The liquid stripes in many of the designs were similarly painted to mimic the bands of translucent colour frequently found in mochaware.

Spending many hours in the studio making a real mess, I didn’t know what the outcome would be. There were a lot of experiments and mistakes. I think this feeling of doubt, mixed with faith and chance, is perhaps at the heart of mochaware, and really ceramics: a potter willing their acid tea to react with the alkaline slip in such a way that it creates a credible tree; another whispering a prayer to the kiln gods as everything is loaded. With clay you are at the mercy of forces greater than yourself – an explosion in the kiln or a glazing defect can too easily undo weeks of work. To make something with your hands requires a level of faith and vulnerability that not all possess.

I think we can learn a lot from mochaware. We can learn not to be precious, we can learn to celebrate difference and embrace contrast, we can learn to respect natural materials and those forces greater than ourselves. And above all we can learn from the chance inherent in mochaware’s process which reminds us to doubt, and that certitude can be a false friend. Those Staffordshire potters all those years ago didn’t know what would happen when they started mixing their acid teas and turning their mugs on lathes, but they did it anyway. To create is to make something that’s never existed before. This takes a certain sort of belief. Mochaware teaches us to have faith.

Shop our new mochaware collection