Capturing decorative art - the work of Frances Priest

Abstract

• Within this article I hope to highlight and explore the progression of the practice of Edinburgh-based ceramic artist, Frances Priest, through works held by National Museums Scotland, and her most recent public commission for the city's Royal Edinburgh Hospital. I shall discuss her enduring passion for The Grammar of Ornament, by the Victorian designer and polymath Owen Jones and her desire to reconceptualise and interpret his visual explorations and documentation of pattern from across cultures, held within such Victorian design manuals. Some of these compendia are currently being re-evaluated as part of a system of western cultural appropriation. Priest, however, uses them to create works of contemporary craft that celebrate the history of the decorative arts, and the legacy of the unknown or uncelebrated craftsmen, who created the wonderful motifs and patterns held within them.