This issue 0 of the annual magazine dedicated to ceramics of all kinds unfolds like a day, from morning until evening. But behind this day lies another, more expansive one: that of a life, from birth to death.
This issue 0 opens in the gentle hours of cockcrow, at that dawn when, shaping a little man, one lays his placenta in a little stoneware pot.
Then comes breakfast. The crockery is brought out. The table is set. Eggs are cooked. A berry is eaten. Its seed is planted. Sated, one dozes off against a little scrap of poetry. Hardly any time passes. Soon enough, we'll make our way over to Roland's. At eleven, Bourdaloue preaches. It is interminable. All the better.
The bells carve up the hours as a knife divides bread, and, leaving the church, everyone hurries to prepare the meal. A pot-pourri of meats and beans, served in simple earthenware dishes. A galette follows. Two beans. A King. A Queen. Cheers erupt. Crowns are passed around. So are the days.
The afternoon belongs to the hands. We draw. We head to the workshop. A few plates. Some tureens. Bowls. The clay turns, and the fingers learn. Before going home, there will still be chickens to feed.
At dusk, the big candles are lit. We sit by the fire and make love. After that, we'll blow our heads apart. And the grave: without faith, without a roof.
What will become of us? A pot. An ash. A recipe. A few lines of verse. A handful of seeds. Ancient gestures. Tiny stories.
That's all.
Founded and edited by Benjamin Dosgheas, Pot-Pourri is an independent annual review dedicated to those who make, think about, observe, or draw inspiration from ceramics; without ever being limited to it.
Neither a current-affairs magazine nor a technical journal, Pot-Pourri is conceived as a space for sensory brainstorming and cross-disciplinary storytelling, where ancient forms meet contemporary gestures, where poetry encounters matter, and where folk arts, naïve gestures, learned forms, sensitive intuitions, and tiny stories intertwine.
This singular world is given over to a fertile disorder: a field of forces, a theatre of signs where forms, images, and ideas cross paths, answer one another, and sometimes lose themselves.
Pot-Pourri celebrates profusion without seeking to make an inventory. PP! It is a gentle cry, a magic formula, a state of mind. A review in which to lose oneself for a little while, to find oneself anew; to make room for the unexpected.
