Carol McNicoll

Last updated

Carol McNicoll (born 1943) is an English studio potter whose work is mainly decorative slipcast ware, she is credited with helping to transform the British ceramics scene in the late 1970s. [1]

Contents

Biography

McNicoll was born in Birmingham in 1943, and brought up in Solihull, Warwickshire (now West Midlands). She attended a foundation course at Solihull College of Technology [2] and then studied fine art at Leeds Polytechnic from 1967 to 1970. In 1968 she made a film with three other students titled Musical which collaged and parodied existing musicals; the comedian Roy Hudd was invited to open the premiere. [3] McNicoll was awarded a Princess of Wales Scholarship to attend Royal College of Art from 1970 to 1973, [4] where she felt women were "marginalised" and "attention went to the men who were interested in industrial ceramics". [5]

McNicoll worked as a wardrobe assistant at theatres in Birmingham and London in the early 1960s. [6] In 1970 she designed costumes for Brian Eno of Roxy Music who was then her boyfriend. [7] [8] Her black cockerel feathered boa collar achieved an iconic status in the fledgling glamrock period. [3] McNicoll supervised the design of the cover for Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets album with one of her teapot designs being featured on the sleeve cover. [9] She also worked as a machinist for the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, [10] who in 1972 commissioned her to make a unique dinner set, [11] consisting of pink coffee cups with hands for saucers. [12]

McNicoll makes sculptural functional ceramics and has lectured widely including at Camberwell College of Arts from 1986 to 2000. [13] In 2001 she was short-listed for the Jerwood Prize for Ceramics. [14] Recent work has been constructed from slipcast and found objects such as toy soldiers, using commercial and self made transfer decoration. [15]

McNicoll says of her work "I am entertained by making functional objects which are both richly patterned and comment on the strange world we have created for ourselves." [16] She exhibits internationally and in 2003 City Gallery at Leicester, England presented a major retrospective of her work. [17] Her work is in the V&A's modern collection. [18]

McNicoll lives and works in a converted piano factory in Kentish Town in London, designed by her friend the architect Piers Gough in exchange for a McNicoll tea set. [19]

Exhibitions

Selected recent exhibitions include: [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery</span> Museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BM&AG) is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England. It has a collection of international importance covering fine art, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, natural history, archaeology, ethnography, local history and industrial history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fashion and Textile Museum</span>

The Fashion and Textile Museum is the only museum in the UK of contemporary fashion and textile design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zandra Rhodes</span> British fashion designer (born 1940)

Dame Zandra Lindsey Rhodes,, is an English fashion and textile designer. Her early education in fashion set the foundation for a career in the industry creating textile prints. Rhodes has designed garments for Diana, Princess of Wales and numerous celebrities such as rock stars Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan. She has also designed textiles for interiors, featuring her prints on furniture and homewares. In 2003 Rhodes founded the Fashion and Textile Museum in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Studio pottery</span> Modern hand-made artistic pottery

Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.

Eileen Cooper is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solihull</span> Town in West Midlands, England

Solihull is a market town and the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, in the West Midlands, England. Solihull is situated on the River Blythe in the Forest of Arden area. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census, and its wider borough had a population of 216,240. The town is located 8 miles (12 km) southeast of Birmingham and 13 miles (21 km) west of Coventry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seth Cardew</span> English studio potter

Seth Cardew was an English studio potter. He was the eldest son of fellow potter Michael Cardew and the brother of the composer Cornelius Cardew.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Eastman</span> English artist (born 1960)

Kenneth C Eastman is an English ceramic artist, best known for his austere, flat bottomed, slab built ceramic vessels. He exhibits internationally and has won various awards in the field of ceramic arts, including the Italian Premio Faenza in 1995, the ‘Gold Medal’ at the World Ceramic Exposition 2001 Korea and the ‘President De la Generalitat Valencia’at the 5th Biennale International De Ceramica, Manises, Spain. In 1998 he was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship in Ceramics. He was elected as a member of the International Academy of Ceramics in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Fritsch</span> British ceramic artist (born 1940)

Elizabeth Fritsch CBE is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noelle Reno</span> American fashion blogger & TV presenter (b.1983)

Elizabeth Noelle Reno, known as Noelle Reno, is an American marketing leader, public speaker, and influencer who currently lives in London, United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Keeler (studio potter)</span> British studio potter

Walter Keeler is a British studio potter and was professor of Ceramics at the University of the West of England from 1994 to 2002. Keeler makes salt glaze pottery influenced by early Staffordshire Creamware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Nicoll</span> Canadian painter

Marion Florence Nicoll was a Canadian painter. She is known as one of the first abstract painters in Alberta. In 1933 she became the first woman instructor at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art. In 1977 Nicoll became the first woman artist in the Prairies to become a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Barrie Cook was a British abstract artist who lived and worked on The Lizard in Cornwall, England.

Glenn Adamson is an American curator, author, and historian whose research and work focuses on the intersections of design, craft, and contemporary art. Adamson is currently editor-at-large of The Magazine Antiques, editor of Journal of Modern Craft, a freelance writer and a curator. Adamson has held previous notable appointments as the Director of the Museum of Arts and Design, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and as Curator at the Chipstone Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coxwold Pottery</span>

The Coxwold Pottery was a pottery studio based in the village of Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England, launched by artist potters Peter and Jill Dick in 1965, and in operation until 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Rhodes</span> British painter

Carol Mary Rhodes was a Scottish artist known for paintings and drawings of landscapes and marked by human intervention. Rhodes was born in Edinburgh, but spent her infancy and youth in Serampore, India. She moved to the UK in her mid teens and studied fine art at the Glasgow School of Art. Graduating in 1982 she became politically active around issues of disarmament, feminism and social justice. Her focus returned to painting around 1990, and she developed her distinctive idiom of aerial-view, ‘man-made’ landscapes around 1994. These began to be exhibited in the United Kingdom and internationally, and entered many public collections. Rhodes’s work, and her part-time lecturing at Glasgow School of Art, was influential for younger generations of artists. In 2013 she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Stokes</span>

Ann Stokes or Ann Mellis was a British and Scottish-born ceramic artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Lee (potter)</span> British potter

Jennifer Elizabeth Lee is a Scottish ceramic artist with an international reputation. Lee's distinctive pots are hand built using traditional pinch and coil methods. She has developed a method of colouring the pots by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Her work is held in over forty museums and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2018 Lee won the Loewe Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson in 2017. The prize was presented to her at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London.

Lily Inge Newmark is an English actress and former model. She is best known for her roles in the film Pin Cushion (2017), the Netflix series Sex Education (2019–2020) and Cursed (2020), and the Sky One series Temple (2019–).

Jacqui Poncelet, also known as Jacqueline Poncelet, is a Belgian artist. Poncelet began her art career as a ceramist in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s her practice expanded to include painting, sculpture and public art.

References

  1. ↑ Harrod Tanya (2003). Carol McNicoll (Craft). Lund Humphries Publishers.
  2. ↑ "Biography – Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery Information Centre". bmagic.org.uk. 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014. attended a foundation course at Solihull College of Technology (1966–67)
  3. 1 2 Bracewell Michael (2011). Roxy Music and Art-Rock Glamour: Faber Forty-Fives: 1969–1972. Faber and Faber.
  4. ↑ Watson Oliver (1993). Studio Pottery. Phaidon. p. 220. ISBN   071482948X.
  5. ↑ Vincentelli Moira (2000). Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels Vincentelli . Manchester University Press. ISBN   978-0719038402.
  6. ↑ Bailey, Kristen (2014). "Top Of The Pots – Carol McNicoll Takes Over Hove Museum". culture24.org.uk. Retrieved 22 October 2014. McNicoll worked as a wardrobe assistant.
  7. ↑ Auslander Philip (2006). Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. University of Michigan Press. p. 196.
  8. ↑ "Carol McNicoll". paulgormanis.com. 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
  9. ↑ "The Album Covers of Brian Eno". printmag.com. 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
  10. ↑ "Biography". bmagic.org.uk. Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery Information Centre. 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014. worked as a machinist for the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes
  11. ↑ "Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection: The Button Flower print". zandrarhodes.ucreative.ac.uk. 2014. Archived from the original on 30 March 2013. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
  12. ↑ "Zandra Rhodes: The Fashion Designer talks to MidCentury". midcenturymagazine.com. 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014. pink coffee cups with hands for saucers
  13. ↑ "Contemporary Applied Arts: Carol McNicoll". caa.org.uk. 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
  14. ↑ "Carol McNicoll". uwe.ac.uk. 2010. Retrieved 22 October 2014. 2001 she was short-listed for the Jerwood Prize for Ceramics
  15. ↑ "Contemporary Applied Arts: Carol McNicoll". caa.org.uk. 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
  16. ↑ "Open Frequency 2013: Carol McNicoll, selected by Dr Glenn Adamson – Open Frequency, Features". axisweb.org. 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
  17. ↑ "Ceramics Symposium". holburne.org. 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014. a major retrospective of her work
  18. ↑ Lutyens, Dominic (2014). "Interiors: It's a jumble out there". The Observer. Retrieved 22 October 2014. examples of her work in the V&A'.
  19. ↑ Whiting David (2009). Modern British Potters and their studios. A&C Black.
  20. ↑ Adamson, Glenn (2014). "Open Frequency 2013: Carol McNicoll, selected by Dr Glenn Adamson - Open Frequency, Features | Axisweb". axisweb.org. Retrieved 23 October 2014. Selected recent exhibitions include

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.