Posted on by susurrus

Geometry as Muse: Halima Cassell’s Patterned Stoneware

Spot lighting adds decorative shadows to a geometric bowl by Hamila Cassell

“Whatever our differences in culture or external appearances, there is more that unites us than divides us.”

Halima Cassell

Terracotta-coloured ceramic by Hamila Cassell

I vividly remember gazing, transfixed, before a display of hand-carved, pierced stoneware a few years ago in Manchester Art Gallery. Spot lighting highlighted the contours of the designs and cast overlapping shadows around for added effect.

The terracotta bowl (above) has no strictness for its undoubted calculation. Balanced waves around the edges almost seem folded fabric, for all their heft.

I marvelled at the artist’s ability to imagine in three dimensions and combine patterns so boldly, deftly and delicately. My mind may not work that way, but it certainly likes to play with the lines and forms someone else has so brilliantly created.

Born in Kashmir, Hamila was raised in my home county of Lancashire. Her experience of  sometimes being made to feel displaced in the two places she feels deeply connected to gives her the urge to show how traditional ideas can beautifully include rather than exclude.

She coaxes different clays in natural, earthy colours into patterns inspired by decorative elements from cultures spreading across many locations and ages, somehow reinvented to swirl companionably together.  Notes from the exhibition highlighted Celtic, Moorish, Neo-Gothic, and African patterns as well as natural elements, such as feathers.

Hand-carved black stoneware with a geometric design by Hamila Cassell

Hamila Cassell's ceramic bowl with bold, geometric design and shadow effects

Hamila Cassell exhibit, Manchester

Visit Hamila Cassell’s website for more wonders including prints, outdoor sculptures and even a range of wallpaper. I’ve linked to a thistle head design for anyone who has been missing a floral fix from me. More to come!

Shared for Becky’s GeometricJanuary challenge.

32 Replies to “Geometry as Muse: Halima Cassell’s Patterned Stoneware”

  2. Nice to have you pop up like this, Susan. Happy New Year! I like a couple of them very much but don’t have anywhere I could do them justice.

    1. You mean to say you don’t have a little gallery, with white-painted walls, plinths and spotlights? Perhaps you could set about making one. You’d be an excellent curator.

    1. Every bit of surface has a pattern woven over it, and not in a straightforward way either. Clearly someone who was born to do this.

  8. What a creative mind and skilled hands. I love the shapes and shadows she’s created.
    …and thanks for the link, Susan.

  9. PS. Had a look at her drawings and collages. Now that is a creative 2-dimensional artwork I could really get into (being a bit OCD and having attention to detail as a character trait, myself).

    1. Pattern intrigues and pleases me, although often it is a bit too rigid for my mind to engage with for long, which is why I like the plant versions. These seem to have more of the fluidity of nature to give life to the calculations needed to make them work.

Comments are closed.