Jessica Joslin

Jessica incorporates her fondness for the charm of traditional ceramic ware into an exploration of ornamentation to create unique handmade plates intended for wall display. Her designs combine the elegance and simplicity of this bespoke craft with a sense of humour to produce stylish decorative objects.

Interested in the idea of functional ceramics, Jessica unashamedly calls attention to the things in themselves, their very decorativeness becoming a theme of the work. Her play on appearances manifests itself most explicitly in the ceramic gift-plates that have their wrapping embellished onto their surface. Drawing upon the tradition of ribbon plates, which feature ribbons tied through apertures around the plate’s edge, Jessica further relieves her own plates of their possible functionality by puncturing holes and placing the bows at their centre, demanding, even, that they be appreciated as they are and not appropriated for some other use.

In Jessica’s use of customary and traditional patterns one senses a certain nostalgia, while her treatment of these designs proves that she is always experimenting and looking for new combinations.