The Ceramist

Bodil Manz

As part of Edinburgh Art Festival we are delighted to present The Ceramist. Bodil Manz is an artist who has an international reputation for her work in ceramic, in particular her sublime wafer thin porcelain vessels.

Born in Copenhagen in 1943, Manz graduated from the School of Arts and Craft, Copenhagen in 1965 and went on to study at the Escuela de Diseño y Artesanias in Mexico and Berkeley University in California. She established a studio with her late husband, ceramist Richard Manz, in 1967 in Horve, where she continues to live and work today. The deceptively simple cylinder is the vehicle for Bodil Manz’s art. Casting porcelain slip to create delicate semi-transparent vessels, Manz has spent over three decades refining her exploration of the cylinder form. Sometimes the finest of lines are traced and revealed across the inner and outer surface and in other works solid blocks of colour, reminiscent of the palette of Soviet painters of the twenties, provide geometric counterpoints to the delicacy of form and material.