The Artists

Marielle Macville - Marielle Macville Ceramics

Functional archeologically inspired ceramic vases and artifacts

mariellemacville@gmail.com
mmarielle.etsy.com

My love for eating and the right presentation of food, has led me to the art of ceramics. I've collected dishes and other ceramics ever since I began traveling the world as a fashion model. I started designing my own pottery after enrolling in a ceramics class some 10 years ago. Although most work remains purely functional, it is no longer limited to culinary use. I am currently working on my Artifacts Collection - a collection of vases and other artifacts, inspired by post Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures and Ritual Bronzes of Ancient China. This is an ongoing fascination - dating back to my college days studying Cultural Anthropology in the Netherlands.

All the vases are wheel-thrown, hand altered, glazed in hues from patinaed copper bronze to turquoise in a gas kiln to cone 10, or to cone 6 in an electric kiln.

My Artifacts Collection has been inspired by treasures that I imagine litter the floor of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. Casualties - or better - survivors of centuries of Greco-Roman and Sassanid wars. I picture the Hellespont where entire fleets perished - triremes and galleons to the last man, while their possessions, scattered and buried in sand, still offer testimony to not only the battles these empires fought and lost, but moreover to the cultural osmosis that ensued. As a result forever enriching and influencing each society's heritage and ultimately ours.

The collection is an ode to the few surviving artifacts that bore witness to these battles and bloodshed. Whether designed for Gods, mortals or heroes, once disgorged from the bowels of their ships, these pots or vases were fated to play host to octopi and other sea-life in peaceful times. Their patina, chips and cracks revealing scars of centuries of scouring sand, shells, coral and rocks.