Issue 7
The Borrowed Surface
An online magazine about craft and material culture
published by the Nordkyst Craft Council
Hands at the wheel in the Reiersen studio. Photo by Milla Sandvik.
1 Foreword
It is our pleasure to welcome you to the seventh issue of The Ember, entitled “The Borrowed Surface”. Edited by the artists and educators Hanne Ø. Reiersen and Petra Lindqvist, this issue gathers texts on what happens at the outer edge of a made object — where glaze meets clay, where solder meets silver, where a finished thing finally meets a body. Across nine contributions the writers ask what a surface is asked to carry, and how long it is expected to carry it.
2 Editorial
“The Borrowed Surface”, the seventh issue of The Ember, examines the outer skin of the made object through nine interviews, essays and articles edited by the artists Hanne Ø. Reiersen and Petra Lindqvist and published by the Nordkyst Craft Council. The issue questions the assumed permanence of finish, and looks at what a surface says about the hand that made it and the body that wears it. It features texts by Olav T. Bruvik, Anne Kloster, Johanna Zander, Linn S. Bratlie, Julia Wilde and Katarina Detter, alongside Vivi Stamatiou and Anders Kvam Holt, showing work by Kristine Ervig, Ingvild K. Rennes, Hanne Ø. Reiersen, Laurel Kalman, Sayo Ito and Judit Marek.
3 Article
In this text, Olav T. Bruvik questions the presumed permanence of the fired object and introduces us to three artists — Sayo Ito, Íris Elva Karlsdóttir and Kristine Ervig — whose practices embrace perishable materials, making work that was never meant to outlast us.
4 Essay
Linn S. Bratlie’s essay looks at finishing work — the slow, frequently tedious close of any silversmithing process, and the part now being rewritten by emerging technologies and automated tooling. Bratlie sets out what these aids make possible while arguing for the protection of manual skill and the tacit knowledge that only repetition can teach.
5 Article
Anne Kloster investigates the practices of three artists whose work with metal treats the surface skin of an object as a site for transformation and negotiation.
6 Artist presentation
Blacksmith and artist Anders Kvam Holt uses techniques older than the workshop that houses them to make contemporary sculpture in mild steel. His work traces a search for the monumental inside the minute, and a long curiosity about materiality and the many things it will agree to hold.
7 Interview
In an interview with three artists, Johanna Zander explores the theme of the relationship between the body and metal art and jewellery. Renate D. Aas questions the social standards attached to the female form. Judit Marek works where craft meets the sciences, using sweat and tears to grow her gemstones. Laurel Kalman turns craft materials on the performing body, photographing and distorting it in ways that sit uneasily between attraction and repulsion.
8 Essay
In this essay, Vivi Stamatiou discusses wearable signs and adornment, their ability to carry political messages, and the part they play in forming subjects and identities. By researching a badge once used to sort and shame, Stamatiou finds a way to investigate the world-shifting habits of adornment, and the power of turning a symbol of oppression into a badge of honour.
9 Essay
In this text, Julia Wilde and Katarina Detter invite us to consider jewellery as a means of communication, directed both inward and outward. Taking the wedding ring as their example, Wilde and Detter investigate its significance in relation to identity, status, materiality, absence and loss.