Isi Rodriguez

Saggar or cylindrical container. Handbuilded. Brushwork Decoration with Volcanic Ashes and Reclaimed London Common London Bricks Glazes.

A saggar is a type of ceramic container used to protect the precious imperial porcelain wares created at Jingdezhen from direct flames and to prevent wood ash from blemishing the ceramics. 

Throughout this year the construction of saggars became a common task, and one of great importance. Only this time it was about protecting the kilns from possible damage from my local wild clay pots, and experiments with London bricks and volcanic ash. Generating a new internal debate on where the value of things resides. The gap between the content and the container.

In this way, these simple forms were gaining relevance in my practice, to the point of first building the saggars and then thinking about the shape of the pieces that would be housed inside them.

The urgency and spontaneity of the brushwork decoration intend to transcribe the energy and language of the streets of London. But also the wild strength of the volcanic landscape of my place of origin.

Transformation as the main axis of this research on the creation of glazes from recovered common London bricks -physical residue of a London era, testimony to the fire, mud and human sweat that forged the stock-brick landscape of Georgian London-, local resources as brick clay, and the volcanic ashes collected and packed in a travel suitcase from the last eruption that occurred on the island of La Palma at the precise moment that I was going to move to London to resume my studies at the RCA in September 2021. 

The journey, the search, the need to understand the world before you, to seek connections, change and loss.

A journey marked by the deep impression of fiery red and burnt black, that the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, on the island of La Plama, left on my retina and in my ears. The magnificence of such a force of nature which collided directly with the pain that this caused in the affected people. Something not so different from what the inhabitants of the Georgian suburbs must have felt, witnessing with horror as exponential surgical brick buildings of their fields. In a process of urbanization that for a century caused the sky to be covered with a haze of smoke and ashes. A process that tasted of ollin and grime.

Architectural alchemy. Each brick not only contains the DNA of the people of that time - added to the mixture in the manufacture of bricks through household waste - but also contains a key element for the formation of enamel: ashes. Therefore, each brick, like volcanic ash, is an enamel former on its own.

The bricks were collected, crushed by hand and heated to a high temperature in a ceramic kiln. More than 40 different glazes were created. 

This work delves into the founding history of the city. Emphasizing the qualities of the materials used to speak of the contemporary human condition, and of my own personal jorney.

Urban Vessels. SW19 1HE. London Blue. It is a series of vessels built by hand with the traditional Canarian technique of "Urdido". Made with local clay excavated in the city itself known as London Clay, or London Blue, and signed by graffiti artist Steve Seagull. Generating new layers, new ways of asking the same questions.

This body of work responds to a personal need to reconnect with clay, where the physicality of the material and its healing effect guide the entire process.

London is clay, and this fact fascinated me. Finding this precious material at the entrances of the city itself becomes an obsession and a challenge. After 5 months of searching, I was able to access London Clay, also known as London Blue, from a dig at Wimbledon. Crossing London three times, dragging a shopping cart with 80kg of wet clay all over London, was just the beginning of this exciting adventure.

The process of preparing the clay for use becomes quite a ritual. Keeping apart each one of the stones, each shell, each strange object that I find while handling the mud. Like small gems covered hidden by sticky mud, not being cleaned and their value revealed, until the end of the whole process.

London Clay, also known as London Blue, is a marine geologic formation of Ypresian age (early Eocene epoch, c. 56–49 million years ago) known for its fossil content. The presence of a thick layer of clay under London itself has conditioned the morphology and urban landscape of the city as we know it today. This clay mass below the city is subject to large volume changes depending on its moisture content, leading to many problems near the ground surface, including structural movement and building fracture.