Tamsin van Essen

• 

• MA Degree

  School

  School of Humanities

  Programme

  MA Ceramics & Glass, 2012

• Contact

• [email protected]
  +44 (0)7764 587 024
  http://www.vanessendesign.com

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• Vanitas Vanitatum: A garniture of beauty and decay


  This collection explores the transience of beauty and the futility of excess. Inspired by the melancholy opulence of seventeenth-century Dutch vanitas paintings, and the tragic allure of Dickens’ Satis House, I aim to capture the fragile moment when abundance turns to decay.


  An exuberance of decoration disrupts the vases’ forms, implying deterioration and ruin. Frozen in time just at the point of disintegration, the vases represent an ornamental memento mori, hinting at the impermanence of material existence and the inevitable decline of beauty.


• Degrees

• BA (Hons), Ceramic Design, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, 2007; BA (Hons), Physics & Philosophy, University of Oxford, 1998

• Experience

• Freelance ceramic designer, 2007 to present

• Exhibitions

• Collect, Saatchi Gallery, London, 2012; Le Décor est Planté, Fondation Bernardaud, Limoges, France, 2011; Skin, Wellcome Collection, London, 2010; Small Show Huge Talent, Sotheby's, London, 2009

• Awards

• Second prize, Wellcome Trust Design for Science Award, 2007; Winner, Chartered Society of Designers Award, 2006; Winner, William Atkinson Scholarship, 2006