Renée Bott

Dinner Plate Sepia , 2021

 
21 x 21 in

acrylic on paper

During the isolation of the pandemic, artist Renee Bott became nostalgic for the days when people gathered around the dinner table and exchanged conversation and ideas. The care taken with setting the table and the reverential attitude toward mealtime engaged her. A master printmaker herself, it is no wonder that she was drawn to transferware china which is about as close as you can get to printing on ceramics. Developed in Staffordshire England around 1760, patterns such as the famous Blue Willow and others emerged and became collectibles around the globe. Bott selected 8 different patterns rendering them meticulously onto paper.

“Things were slower then,” reflected Bott. “The same was true of handwritten letters.” She discovered an archive of letters that soldiers wrote home in the 1860's during the civil war and used them as a background for the plates. Bott rendered the images onto handmade laid paper from a journal that she discovered and then mounted them onto Japanese paper to accommodate the size of the works. The subtle variations of the patterns along with the handwritten script of the letters home capture the nostalgia she felt for these rituals of personal communication.

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