Good teapots are hard to master and they command a certain respect in the ceramic canon. Nuske takes consummate care with the overall unity of his designs and the relationships between lids, spouts, shoulders, handles and base are all carefully judged. After initial concept work in the form of sketches comes the crafting of various components, with pots and lids thrown on the wheel using either white or red earthenware and spouts and handles formed by moulding and hand building. The now assembled but still raw pots are then freely painted with coats of coloured slips and vitreous engobes. Next comes more brushwork decoration and carving with a final coating of practical transparent glaze applied only on the inside. Nuske’s feel for the materials, trained eye and skilled crafting makes these technical complexities seem simple.

I hope I have been clear about what Bruce is doing here, for he is using those subtle understandings of materials and techniques that give craft objects their unmistakable qualities and appeal. Qualities that industrial manufactures or designers who work at a remove from direct hand crafting are unable achieve. This is not to say that objects produced by manufactures or designers do not have appealing qualities, it is just that those qualities are not the same as those expected from finely crafted works.

Nuske’s love of ceramics as an expressive and useful medium is blended with his lifelong passion for observation and understanding of botany and zoology. His ceramics are also

Below: Wheelthrown, unglazed externally with brush work and carved blue and black slip over high fired white EW

Above: Wheelthrown, unglazed externally with brush work and carved black and white slip over high fired red EW

Group of Wheelthrown Teapots, unglazed externally, brush work decorated and carved slips over high fired EW bodies.Average h.16cm

inspired by the notion of the decorative - and its boon companion, Wit. His neo-Victorian teapots, a confluence of Oriental and European bloodlines, are elegant reminders of much that is unfashionable in the world of studio ceramics nowadays. These boldly traditional shapes with complex organic brushwork and slip carved decoration stand in sharp contrast to the designer minimalism often encountered on the shelves of gallery retailers. There is a profound understanding of historical style and design visible in Bruce’s studied compositions of functional form, which seem to me to be infused with elements of the poetic, steeped in traditions of utility and capable of acting as starting points for stirring the imagination.

Nuske has been making ‘haute coiffure’ ceramics for more than 20 years and long ago took up the torch for exploring possibilities for decoration, shape and function. He has a long and successful association with Adelaide’s renowned Jam Factory where he shared a large studio with Bronwyn Kemp and Mark Thompson. They would discuss glaze formulas and argue over kiln space and whose turn it was to buy the biscuits. Now Head of the Ceramics Department at Adelaide Institute of TAFE, with an enviable exhibiting history, Bruce is the Vidal Sassoon of ceramic decoration and his lyrical brush work is often brilliantly relieved by boisterous sgraffito that cuts through layers of coloured slips to dramatically reveal vivid clay bodies beneath. We should not be fooled by his fresh and free approach however, he is never simply slap dash or happy-go-lucky. There is always a strong sense of organised rhythm underpinning his decoration, with botanical motifs, unexpected patterning and bird images flowing and swirling musically around his forms.

Nuske, seemingly, was born scribbling and at an early age took delight in the pencil. Later on he became a fan of the graphic gymnastics of Mr Squiggle. He has since continued to develop his drawing and painting abilities with a style clearly influenced by natural history illustration, handbooks of ornament, elaborate cake decoration, excessive tea drinking, textile prints and the dizzy patterns of exotic chintz. Bruce eschews the current mania for the haptic lapse and remains a master of luxurious ‘free style’ hand decoration. His startling surface treatments wrap around pots like psychedelic cummerbunds or cling like hallucinogenic upholstery on swelling and seasick ottomans. There is also something a bit lurid lurking in some of his painted works. I am sometimes reminded of frenzied 18th century doodles and flourishes that you see appended around the margins of old drawings or those outlandish floral midriff tattoos that you see on plump girls on buses.

These teapots are whimsical and personal and, though ornamental in both shape and surface, they are serious service objects grounded in expectations of practical use. Surprising and a bit enigmatic in themselves, these teapots assert the primacy of utility and the engagement of vessels as interactive objects, able to be touched and used, to be lived with as well as contemplated. Perhaps this is why Bruce’s work has such appeal to collectors and lovers of studio ceramics.

Stephen Bowers is an Adelaide based ceramic artist, teapot collector and arts manager.
Photos: Mick Bradley