The Brush Embroiderer
Posted on: Thursday, 19 June 2008, 06:00 CDT
By Highet, Juliet
Carolina Tolstoy, an artist and sculptor of Middle Eastern descent who draws inspiration for her work from Islamic and Ottoman art talked to Juliet Highet for The Middle East magazine MAGICIAN WITH ARABESQUES, conjuror with scrolls, romancer with sweeping leaves, Carolinda Tolstoy has covered her ceramics with these and other design motifs for many successful years. Recently, dramatically, they have leapt off the magnificent chargers, vases and bowls onto every conceivable surface. "The patterns have taken off into stratospheres of their own, sweeping with a masterful freedom over whatever surface the brush undulates and flows," says Tolstoy. "Nothing can stop them now that they have taken a great leap into the world, flowing from one area to another - a wall, a curtain, a lampshade, a shoe, waterproof boots, an umbrella, silk or suede - what about a car or a plane? I long to see the patterns moving at a pace..."
This petite, exotically beautiful woman, of Middle Eastern and Greek descent, causes every facade to leap luminously to life, as the light catches the iridescent lustre and shimmering gold of everything she has touched, especially the silks. She swirls dramatically into view, silk gown billowing, with layers of jewellery, including her own gold nugget necklaces, eyes rimmed with kohl and gold. Her chosen palette is pink, purple, lilac, black and gold, colours in which she dresses, decorates her home and characterises her work. "I make, dress and live in my art - it is a whole world - I have become an installation of my own art." Her public appearance is carefully considered, an aspect of her increasing concentration on design, rather than the ceramics for which she is internationally renowned. "It's an iconic style, a Carolinda Look, the design or branding pervading everywhere and everything including my actual brushwork, materials and patterns."
Tolstoy is currently exhibiting in Palm Beach, Florida. "It's a collection of ultrasoft suede coats, silk gowns and shawls, designed and hand-decorated by me, accompanying my faience, lustre and gold ceramic work. The silks I decorate are mostly Italian, soft and fluid, with unrestrained patterns gliding overall, creating the most elegant, fantastical and dramatic effects. It's a very simple way of dressing, and looks very colourful, relaxed and innovative. The lustre of the silks echoes the lustre on the pots, with the gold decoration on the fabrics moving and undulating as it does on the ceramics."
Tolstoy's mastery of "unrestrained patterns gliding overall" is a unique process she has evolved which she calls 'Brush Embroidery', a freehand decorating technique with which she covers an entire surface equally. "It doesn't matter whether the pattern gets larger or smaller, it continues to cover the surface with the same density." The effect is paradoxical in its controlled freedom.
'Brush embroidery' has a parallel in the scrolls of Islamic art. On her aesthetic journey, Tolstoy has used various Islamic influenced forms, like floral stylisation, split palmetting or Botteh (Paisley) motifs. Nowadays, arabesques and scrolls dominate that repertoire. In an important monograph titled Carolinda Tolstoy Ceramics, its author, Professor Ernst J. Grube, president of the East West Foundation, New York and the first curator of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, writes, "Scroll-work in its infinite variety of articulation, is unquestionably one of the fundamental elements of pattern and design in the Muslim world. Its potential for filling almost any given form or shape, makes it the ideal medium for an almost unlimited number of applications, from the simple leafy stem scroll to the infinite pattern of the arabesque."
Tales of a 1001 Nights unfold at Tolstoy's home, one of the most original interiors in London, featured in several interior design magazines and books. With its arabesque lilac coloured window grills, it makes a distinct impression on a quiet London street. Passing through the purple front door, one enters a fantasy palace in which most of the surfaces Tolstoy has painted with golden scrolls. "If it stays still long enough, I'll decorate it," she says. Her home is a showcase for her work and entertaining her friends. Curved niches, delicately fibre-optically lit, cover a wall of the dining room, showing sources of inspiration for her work. These contain antiques such as Ottoman Iznik ceramics, Persian Safavid and Syrian tiles, and lustre ware from Moorish Spain. Upstairs is the gallery, with a long wall of niches displaying Tolstoy's own ceramics. Below them, appearing to slide along the floor, is a series of abstract, curiously sensual sculptured forms called The Misshapen World, a recent development in clay. "I have moved away from the symmetry of my thrown pieces, evolving into another field, which has taken the Islamic decoration with it to adorn these asymmetrical forms. I've been throwing for so many decades of roundness; it's quite a challenge now to confront The Misshapen World. It's a total distortion of the world of which we are all aware, so that the shapes are unexpected, undulating in a soft, sensuous way. They are emotional, not visual. It's the feelings expressed of whom I am, the continual undulating motion, which you can see in all my decoration. This is a realisation of the brush embroidery in solid form."
Constantly innovative, Tolstoy is developing new series, new projects, and new exhibition concepts all the time. First came The Misshapen World, then Phormiskoi, followed by Clouds and Treasures. Latest are the gold nugget necklaces. All of the new collections of ceramic work have the sinuous fluidity of fabric, freeing clay to behave like silk in its movement, sheen and opulence.
Lustrous colour is as important to Tolstoy as sensuous shapes, particularly pink, which for her symbolises optimism and vitality. Beneath a jewel-like Persian Qajar painting of lovers in her gallery is a huge curvaceous lilac velvet divan, evoking shades of the harem. On a hot night, the diaphanous pink silk curtains waft around a metal olive tree on whose branches hang gilded Phormiskoi, the second new series. She drew on her Greek ancestry to uncover legends about golden leather pouches hanging in olive trees to catch olives which have turned into gold coins. She in turn transforms the leather pouches into gilded clay.
The alchemist moved on to create Clouds, ceramic wall hangings that appear to move in waves like draped material. Shaped by her hands, rather than rolled-out, they encapsulate her mastery of faience - tinglazed earthenware brushed with lustre and gold, decorated with acrylic paint, her medium of silk. "The Clouds have two sides, as people do. One is the disguise or illusion we present to the world; the reverse aspect is earthy, the natural reality of our being."
Another collection, Treasures, also makes clay behave surrealistically like silk. The small gold free-flowing sculptures glow with the signature faience, lustre and gold, the difference being that the Treasures are embellished with semi-precious stones, like rose quartz, turquoise, amethysts and rubies.
Every time I go to this house where "dreams are realised, not just dreamed", the irrepressibly energetic Tolstoy is creating something new - like gilded ceramic jewellery of Byzantine brilliance which she calls 'nugget necklaces'. She recently showed me another new departure, a collection of 'flat art' - canvases painted with oils and acrylic, luminous with accretions of marble dust, gold and silver leaf. Now she is making screens of three panels of canvas stretched across wood, which she is painting with scrolls and arabesques.
All of this tactile richness, witty sophistication - and no doubt more of an unexpected dimension - will entrance us at a the exhibition titled Carolinda Tolstoy's Room, a fantasy land of painted, draped silk textiles and gowns, gold nugget jewellery, paintings and screens, accompanying a collection of Clouds, Treasures and other ceramic work. Minimalist it won't be, but imagine the effect of one ethereal, shimmering vase in a post- modern apartment - sensational.
All of the new collections of ceramic work have the sinuous fluidity of fabric. Lustrous colour is as important to Tolstoy as sensuous shapes, particularly pink, symbolising optimism and vitality
LEFT: BRUSH embroidery on suede, titled "Rest in Harem". TOP RIGHT: Iznik vase. BELOW: Faience and gold nugget necklace
TOP LEFT: Part of the new concepts: cloud
ABOVE: Carnotiona, brush embroidery acrylic on 2m silk shawl
BACKGROUND: Phormiskoi, the follow-up to Misshapen World
RIGHT: Brush embroidery on gown
The silks I decorate are mostly Italian, soft and fluid, with unrestrained patterns gliding overall, creating the most elegant, fantastical and dramatic effects
Copyright International Communications Jun 2008
(c) 2008 Middle East. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Middle East
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds