SHELBURNE, Vermont (July 18, 2024)—Shelburne Museum presents the work of renowned British artist Paul Scott in the exhibition Confected, Borrowed & Blue: Transferware by Paul Scott that includes provocative reinterpretations of 19th-century transferware from Shelburne Museum’s permanent collection along with a work commissioned for the exhibition.
“Exhibiting contemporary work that is inspired or influenced by the collections is a longstanding tradition at Shelburne,” said Kory Rogers, Francie and John Downing Senior Curator of American Art. “Paul Scott’s wry way of using transferware, a major part of Shelburne’s decorative arts collection, as a medium for social commentary often delivered with a sense of humor, is ingenious, and picks up on a thread seen throughout Shelburne’s collections.”
Scott transforms his medium, commercially produced English and American ceramic plates, with his signature subversive imagery and insightful, and often ironic, commentary on both historic and contemporary issues. His work references traditional porcelain designs developed by late 18th-century English artisans, such as the Willow pattern or Spode’s Blue Italian. These early ornamentations include appropriated motifs copied from hand-painted blue and white wares imported from China, which were mass-produced using printed underglaze transfers applied on porcelain and pearlware blanks. Scott carries this tradition forward, borrowing from traditional patterns and narrative scenery typical of transferware from the period, juxtaposing them with contemporary-themed patterns drawing on controversial topics including environmental degradation, immigration, and the legacies of slavery.
In Confected, Borrowed & Blue: Transferware by Paul Scott plates, platters, and jugs created by Scott—including a special commission exploring the role of the sugar industry in the museum’s founding—are displayed alongside historical ceramics, sparking dialogue between past and present.
In late fall of 2023, when Scott visited Shelburne Museum, he was captivated by the museum and the breadth of its collections ranging from European Impressionist paintings collected by founder Electra Havemeyer Webb’s parents, to American folk art including weathervanes, quilts, decoys and transferware.
“The transferwares and mammoth jugs really captured my imagination,” Scott said. “My large commissioned pearlware jug directly references the extraordinary collection and its origins. The artwork not only celebrates Electra Havemeyer’s vision in creating a much-loved institution with rich, diverse and extensive collections, but it also acknowledges the source of the wealth that enabled the museum’s establishment and acquisitions. Patterns on the lower part of the jug form directly acknowledge the foundational importance of the sugar trade to the Havemeyer family’s wealth and Electra’s inheritance.”
Confected, Borrowed & Blue: Transferware by Paul Scott is on view at Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, through October 20.
About Paul Scott
Paul Scott is a British artist and author, known for his innovative approach to ceramics that merges traditional pottery techniques with contemporary art. Born in 1953, Scott has developed a distinctive style that often incorporates printmaking techniques and explores themes related to history, landscape and the environment.
Scott’s works have been exhibited and acquired by numerous art and teaching museums throughout the United States including Albany Institute of History & Art, Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Art Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Everson Museum, Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, Los Angeles County Art Museum, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Newark Museum of Art, Philadelphia Art Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery and The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut.
In the United Kingdom, he is widely known and regularly featured in exhibitions at museums throughout the country and represented in public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Museum of Wales. He has also completed public sculpture and murals featuring transfer printed tile in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Guldagergård public sculpture park in Denmark as well as numerous public places in the North of England.
His current research project, New American Scenery, has received funding support from the Alturas Foundation, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England. He has written extensively on ceramic art, including books such as Ceramics and Print, which explores the intersection of printmaking and ceramic techniques and has become a key text in the field and Horizon: Transferware and Contemporary Ceramics.
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About Shelburne Museum
Founded in 1947 by trailblazing folk art collector Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960), Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, is the largest art and history museum in northern New England and Vermont’s foremost public resource for visual art and material culture. The Museum’s 45-acre campus is comprised of 39 buildings including the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education and Webb Gallery featuring important American paintings by Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, John Singleton Copley and many more. For more information, please visit shelburnemuseum.org.
Image caption: Paul Scott, Sampler Jug No. 10, Shelburne & Sugar (detail), from “Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery” series, 2024. Transfer print collage on pearlware with platinum lustre, 15 x 14 x 11 3/4 in. Collection of Shelburne Museum, museum purchase, commissioned from the artist with a generous gift of Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen.
High-resolution images from the exhibition Confected, Borrowed & Blue: Transferware by Paul Scott are available HERE.
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