Sarah Mayhew Craddock falls in love with the work of Oxford ceramicist Rupert Spira

Still, timeless, contemplative, and embracing the beauty that surrounds them, the epitome of understated elegance, Rupert Spira’s pottery is nothing short of perfection to my eyes, finger-tips and soul.

Organic, as if reaching and opening up to the sun in exaltation, the works possess the essence of a minimalist, silent yoga retreat in a windowless building of old, sun-bleached timbers, uninterrupted views of the countryside, and cool, perfectly-polished, Italian plaster floors.

Exhibiting a range of vessels from throughout a career that spans 30 years, in a retrospective exhibition at Oxford Ceramics Gallery in Jericho, it is easy to forget that the artist potter is a comparatively recent invention in Western society, as Rupert Spira is so clearly a fine artist.

“A Life in Ceramics is likely to be Spira’s last solo show, so it is very much a celebration of his unique and beautiful work and his immense contribution to the world of contemporary ceramics,” says James Fordham, the director of the Oxford Ceramics Gallery.

The Oxford artist, arguably one of the finest ceramists of his generation, is known for his elegant tableware, his undulating bowls, his groupings of slender, cylinder vessels and his unique poem bowls.

Mr Fordham adds: “The show is already eagerly awaited by the many admirers and collectors of his work, but I hope it will also bring new visitors to the gallery.

“It is a great opportunity to see pieces from every stage of his 30-year career, from his elegant early tableware to his superb poem bowls. We are honoured to be hosting it.”

Complexly simple, Spira’s oeuvre is deeply embedded both in contemporary art and in age-old traditions of working.

While there are numerous examples of words and pottery colliding, it is perhaps the more intricate relationship between words and material exemplified in the Japanese Kenzan style and the Persian tradition of writing on ceramics that offer the most useful insight into Spira’s work.

Inextricably linked or “embedded like a vein of quartz”, to use his own phrase, his inscriptions are more than simply words to be read; indeed, some of them are indecipherable, they are for the viewer to consider.

“While Spira so obviously possesses a profound sensitivity to the capacity of shapes to communicate, his words take the viewer on a sensory exploration of themselves, and of the vessel of which they form part.

Mr Fordham goes on: “Spira’s work has an almost meditative quality; a wonderful stillness and serenity.”

Talking about the evolution of his work, Spira says: “My earlier pieces had a naive and innocent quality that the later pieces didn’t have. The last pieces, the poem bowls, were very different; more transcen-dental, more ethereal, less earthy, less vigorous.

“When I look back on the early pieces they engender a certain nostalgia. I think they have an innocence to them that was perhaps lost in the later pieces; but the later pieces were more refined.”

Oxford Mail:

Spira’s work has obviously been a labour of love.

A master of sgraffito (putting down a preliminary surface, covering it with another, then scratching the superficial layer in such a way that the pattern or shape that emerges is of the lower colour), he experimented with techniques that have seen him inscribing long texts on to his vessels, cutting an alphabet and embossing poems on the surface of his creations and pushing the boundaries of the properties of clay.

And of what is he proudest?

“The large poem bowls are perhaps my favourite pieces,” he says. “They are perhaps the pieces that I feel were the culmination of my work as a potter, of 30 years of making, they are particularly special to me.”

“I’ve done everything that I want to do and said everything that I want to say. My studio practice had come to a natural, effortless closure.”

Spira’s work can be found in private and public collections across the globe, from the V&A to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. By the time this show closes on June 6, I suspect his works will have found a place in new, discerning homes.

Rupert Spira: A Life in Ceramics
Oxford Ceramics Gallery, Walton Street, Oxford
Open from Wed-Sat, 10am-5.30pm. Until June 6
oxfordceramics.com