Artist's Statement

Janice Tchalenko (1942-) was born in Rugby, Warwickshire. She is a ceramic artist best known for her success in translating decorative studio pottery into designs for batch and large-scale production. Since the 1990s she has also undertaken a number of one-off collaborative art works. Initially she worked in the Foreign Office whilst taking evening classes in pottery. She learnt how to throw at Putney School of Art over a period of two years and spent the following three years working as a potter's assistant, teaching pottery in a mental hospital and working at the Craft Potters Association part-time. She continued with her training at Harrow College of Art (1969-1971), taking the vocational pottery course when Victor Margrie and Michael Casson were tutors. She set up a studio in London (1971) having obtained a small grant from the Gwen Mullins Trust and continued to teach in further education colleges. She was given a Crafts Advisory Committee (Crafts Council) grant to buy a large gas kiln (1972). She made functional stoneware pottery working within the Leach tradition, although the work was more inspired by Michael Cardew's work and medieval English pottery.

In the late 1970s she began experimenting with decoration using free forms and vividly coloured patterns. Influences ranged from the French sixteenth century potter, Bernard Palissy, to travels in Russia and Iran where the rich decorative traditions of those countries informed her ideas. Beyond ceramics the work of painters especially Matisse and traditional and contemporary textiles have also been influential. The work pioneered a major change in direction in British studio ceramics in its break with the oriental influence that had dominated so much domestic studio pottery. A Crafts Council bursary (1980) allowed her to develop new work in which she created simple forms with brightly coloured, stencilled and trailed all-over decoration and repeat patterns, glaze trailing on glaze to achieve the vivid colour. She continued to use the wheel but also introduced press moulded square and oval dishes.

A fruitful collaboration with Dart Pottery, which commenced in 1984, gave her the opportunity to design new tableware with brightly painted surface decoration. It was produced by the workshop in sufficiently large batches to keep the price reasonable. In 1985 she and her fellow ceramicist, Carol McNicoll produced designs for Next and later (1991) she also acted as a consultant for a factory in China. She has taught at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1972-87) and is a visiting lecturer at The Royal College of Art where she was made a Fellow in 1987. She received the Manchester Prize for Art in Production in 1988 for her Dart Pottery 'Leopard' design range. In 1992 a major retrospective exhibition of her work was shown at the Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield. She collaborated with the Spitting Image Workshop (1993) to produce a series of ceramics on the theme of the seven deadly sins shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her work is shown internationally and is in many collections in Britain and abroad.

From 7 September  to 1 October 2011 Janice has a new exhibition at the Scottish Gallery - see the Catalogue of the show here!

Background History

1942 - Born Rugby, Warwickshire, England.
1969-71 - Workshop Pottery course at Harrow School of Art.
1972 - Sets up workshop in London with the aid of a Crafts Council grant.
1972-87 - Part-time tutor Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts London.
1980 - Awarded John Ruskin Bursury- Guild of St. George
1981-96 - Tutor Royal College of Art London .
1984 - Designer for Dartington Pottery Devon
1985 - Designs ‘Waterleaf’ textile collection for Designers Guild, London.
1986 - Designs for ‘Next Interiors’ ceramic collection.
1987 - Fellow of the Royal Collage of Art.
1988 - Manchester Prize for Art in Production: 1st. Prize for Dart (Dartington).Leopard design. Support for Design Bursury (Design Council for D.T.I.) Winner Radio 4 Enterprise Award. ‘Small Business of the Year’Dart Pottery.
1989 - Curator ‘Colours of the Earth’ British Council touring exhibition,India 1991-92
1991 - Consultant, Goa You Porcelain Factory, Jiangsu Province, Peoples Republic of China.
1992-92 - Consultant ‘Blue Factory’ Yixing,and Qidong, Peoples Republic of China.
1992-94 - External Examiner Manchester Metropolitan University, Fac. Art and Design.
1994-95 - New designs for Dartington Pottery with Spitting Image.
1994-95 - Research designs Royal Doulton Stoke on Trent.
1994-95 - New designs Poole Pottery Dorset.
1995-98 - External Examiner Bath Collage of Higher Education.
1998-2000 - External Examiner, BTEC, National Diploma in Design London Institute Camberwell.
1998-2000 - Lecturer 3D Design, K.I.A.D.
1999-03 - External Examiner, Demontfort University, Leicester.
2000 - Curator, ‘Ceramica Britannica’ British Council touring exhibition Brazil.
2001 - Winner Laura Ashley Fellowship.
2001-02 - Designs for Nicholas Mosse Pottery Ireland.
2002-03 - New designs for Dartington Pottery and Poole Pottery.
2005-06 - Selector,’ New Designers, Business Design Centre.
2006-08 - Queensberry/Hunt Designs

Exhibition History

2006/7 - The Scottish Gallery Summer Show
2005 - The Scottish Gallery, Summer Show.
2003 - Los Angeles Decorative Arts Fair. Dimont Gallery.
2003 - ‘30/30/ Vision’, Crafts Council, touring.
2001 - Collect, V&A Museum, with Adrian Sassoon.
2002 - ‘Pattern Crazy’, Crafts Council London.
2001 - Scottish Gallery Edinburgh, June.
2001 - ‘An Industry of One’ Designer- Makers in Britain. 1981-2001. Crafts Council, touring.
2001 - ‘Home Sweet Home’, British Council touring Scandinavia and Australia.
2000 - Contemporary Applied Arts, London
2000 - ‘British Keramic’, Grimmerhus, Denmark.
1998 - Derek Topp Gallery, Rowsley, Derbyshire.
1997 - Beaux Arts, Bath.
1997 - Hove Museum and Art Gallery, showcase.
1996 - ‘William Morris Revisited’ Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester touring.
1996 - ‘Modern Antiques’ with Spitting Image workshop, Richard Dennis Gallery London.
1995 - Winners of the Guild of St. George, Ruskin Gallery Sheffield.
1995 - ‘Connoisseurs Choice; Scottish Gallery Edinburgh.
1995 - ‘Teapotmania’ Castle Museum, Nottingham, touring.
1993 - ‘High Table’ Craftspace, Birmingham, touring.
1993 - ‘The Ceramics of Europe’ Keramik Museum Westerwald, Germany, touring.
1993 - ‘Sixty Years of Pottery at Dartington’ Dartington Cider Press Gallery, Devon.
1993 - ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ Janice Tchalenko and Spitting Image workshop, V&A Museum, London.
1992 - Retrospective Exhibition, Ruskin Gallery Sheffield, touring.
1991 - ‘Colours of the Earth’ British Council, India, touring.
1990 - Craftshop, V&A Museum, collaboration with Richard Wentworth.
1990 - ‘British Designs’ Tokyo Japan ..
1990 - National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden.
1989 - ‘L’Europe des Ceramistes’, Auxerre, France.
1989 - ‘Out of the Woods’, Crafts Council , London.
1989 - The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh.
1989 - Galerie L, Hamberg, Germany.
1988 - Sotherbys’ Decorative Arts Award, London.
1988 - ‘Celebrity Crafts’ Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
1988 - ‘Contemporary British Crafts’, British Council, Kyoto, Tokyo,
1987 - Bohun Gallery, Henley on Thames, collab. with David Remfrey.
1987 - ‘The Vessel’ Serpentine Gallery, London.
1987 - Scottish Gallery Edinburgh.
1987 - ‘Dart-Tchalenko Designs’ Midland Arts, Birmingham.
1986 - Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamberg, Germany.
1986 - ‘Neue Tendenzen der Englishe Keramik’, Kunstenhandwerk, Berlin, Germany.
1986 - Kunstformen Jetz, Salzberg, Austria.
1986 - ‘British Art and Design’, Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria, C.O.I.
1985 - Midland Group, Nottingham.
1985 - BlumHelman Gallery New York, U.S.A.
1985 - ‘Fast Forward’, I.C.A. London.
1985 - Yew Tree Gallery, Derbyshire.
1985 - Dienst Beeldende Kunst, Kruithaus, Holland.
1984 - Aberystwyth Art Centre, Wales.
1984 - ‘New Domestic Ware’, Crafts Council, London.
1984 - Maya Behn Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland.
1984 - ‘Artist potters Now’ , Oxfordshire County Museum, and Sotheby’s.
1984 - ‘British Ceramics for Czechoslovakia’, Prague.
1984 - Westminster Gallery, Boston, Mass. U.S.A.
1983 - Craftsman Potters Association, London.
1984 - ‘Domestic Studio Pottery’, City Museum and Art Gallery

Publications

Emmanuel Cooper 'Janice Tchalenko', Ceramic Review 80, March/April 1983, pp 21-25
'Janice Tchalenko: New York pots' Ceramic Review 96, November/December 1985, pp 26-27
Stephen Course 'Dart Pottery: colour from the quarry' Ceramic Review 116, March/April 1989, p 24-27
Peter Dormer 'Tchalenko Eclectic', Crafts 72, January/February 1983, pp16-23
'Dart Pottery: Colour from the Quarry', Ceramic Review 116, 1989, pp 24-27
John Tchalenko and Oliver Watson Janice Tchalenko, Ceramics in Studio, London, Bellow, 1992
Jane Hamlyn 'Talking Pots' Ceramic Review 135, 1992, pp 13-15
Stephen Brayne 'A Tradition of Change: Dartington Pottery', Ceramic Review 150 1994, pp 9-14
'Potted history' Crafts 143, November/December 1996, pp 30-31
Moira Vincentelli , Gendered Vessels,Women and Ceramics Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000

Collections

Dartington Pottery, Tchalenko Designs (now Grayshott Pottery)
Poole Pottery
Queensberry/Hunt