Jean White
Jean is a designer-maker working in ceramics. She has recently completed an MA Design: Craft at Manchester Metropolitan University, having previously worked as a professional illustrator. She now uses her illustration skills to carve and model my drawings into clay. From these carvings she creates her own plaster moulds and slip casts each piece in either porcelain or parian clay from the moulds.
She works to raise awareness of the conservation status of red-list British bird species, species which are threatened. As a keen birdwatcher she has seen the decline in bird numbers first-hand. She references the traditional processes employed in Wedgwood’s Jasperware, combining sprigged work with clean contemporary shapes. Her images rely on the visual similarity of fossils to the low relief of ceramics sprigs, creating a metaphor for the threat to our native birds’ existence.
