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Stoneware, Continued from Page 7

manufactories such as Herend and Zsolnay had a monopoly on the
porcelains. The ICS started to locate alternate materials and equipment
for a greater variety of technologies, temperatures and firing methods.
Jona Gudvardardottir, the art advisor of the ICS, made new glazes
for a new stoneware body sponsored and developed by the studio.
Stoneware was, at that time, a novel clay type in Hungary. A ceramic
supply and retail shop, Interkeram Ltd., was established by the ICS on
site to serve Hungarian potters as well as resident artists. Eventually
Interkeram Ltd. was privatized and has become an independent and
successful business and is now off site. The ICS has also been given
the right by the Herend manufactory to supply the wonderful Herend
porcelain, the “White Gold of Hungary’, for the resident ceramists.
Creaton, an excellent series of midrange German clays, are also
available for the artists.

‘There are two galleries managed by the ICS: Museion No. 1, in central
Budapest near the Applied Arts Museum, and Museion, a handsome
new gallery at the ICS serving the local community. As mentioned,
until 1998, the county and municipality had generously sponsored
Eastern European and International artists, with the proviso that each
artist would leave an art work for the ICS Collection. Consequently
the ICS Collection has become a repository and a visual history of

post-WW II Hungarian and Eastern European ceramics, and is now

The Pale Host, by Debra Sloan, a group of slip cast babies, about 5"
tall each, Herend porcelain fired to Cone 12. Herend porcelain is a
Hungarian clay, available only at the residency.

one of the largest collections of modern ceramics in the world. The
Collection is housed in the enormous cold cellars underneath the ICS,
and it is being recorded and catalogued. The collection is utilized for a
rotating display housed in the Loft Gallery at the ICS, and for traveling
exhibitions. However, this impressive collection should be removed
from storage and be maintained in an appropriate museum/gallery
setting. The ICS directors, and other interested parties, are actively
seeking interest and support for this ambitious project. The existence
of the ICS, and its extraordinary continuity, has demonstrated that
Probstner, the directors, and the ICS staff, can take an idea and make
it a reality.

Kecskemét is a fine old market town in the centre of the Great
Hungarian Plain, 80 kilometres south of Budapest. As mentioned
previously, the 1970s town council that replaced the lost souls from the
plane accident was keen to enhance the city’s cultural life. Consequently

Wood-fired salt kiln in the central courtyard.

Kecskemét boasts an unusual number of galleries, artistic residencies,
and schools, for a population of 100,000. In addition to the ICS
residency, The Kodaly Pedagogical Institute of Music was opened in
1975, in honour of the internationally renowned Kecskem ét musician
and teacher, Zoltan Kodaly, (b. 1888), educating young musicians from
all over the world. Kecskemét Films is a famed Hungarian animation
studio and residency. They host international animation festivals bi-
annually, the next one will be in 2011, the same year as the ICS’s
next Triennial exhibition, and there is an annual symposium for metal
enamelling. There is also a painting ‘art colony’ in the town. Other
cultural sites are the Naive Art Museum, the Museum of Folkart, the
Toy Museum, and the Museum of Photography.

In Kecskemét the ICS is beside a small park (a cemetery in medieval
times) and is contained within a walled enclosure. The older buildings
on the north side of the complex were part of an historic and now
protected group of grain merchant shops, a wagon scale, and a market
square. There are modern structures as well: the Museion Gallery, an
administrative building, and a lecture hall. All of the buildings are
grouped around several large courtyards, one leading to another,
through a labyrinth of walkways, hallways, studios, supply closets,
indoor and outdoor kiln areas, glass facilities, plaster rooms, a laundry
room, a substantial library, kitchens, and offices. Beneath all this is yet
another extensive labyrinth of old underground cellars, where the ICS
Collection is sheltered. The ICS is built in the traditional method of
thick adobe walls and brick floors, with double windows and double
doors to preserve the heat in winter and to keep the rooms cool in
summer. The courtyards, shaded by old trees, are encircled with
large outdoor ceramic sculptures, and the air is filled with birdsong
and distant church bells. Though enclosed and removed, the ICS is
very near the city centre of Kecskemét; museums, churches, theatres,
restaurants, markets, and shopping are all easily within walking
distance.

‘The facilities are expansive, with gas kilns of varying size and style:
two Fred Olsen wood kilns (one designated to salt), nine electric kilns,
Raku kilns, glaze rooms, a large plaster room, a room for photography
and silk screening, an area with grinders and spray booths, a separate
building with glass facilities, and a variety of studio areas. There are
many guest rooms, three kitchens, and a library with computer and
internet. It is a very large complex and maintained by a small and hard-
working staff. The facility is not in perfect condition, as funding is

always short. Things go wrong occasionally, language/communication

Continued on Page 9, International artists

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter : December 2010

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