slipware

And then there’s Phoebe Collings-James, 33, a multidisciplinary London-based artist who has been making wheel-thrown pots accented with abstract slipware drawings and painted sgraffito marks since 2018 under the name Mudbelly.

Among her recent works are a series of monumental wall hangings each made from dozens of slipware tiles adorned with compositions of symbols and patterns that seem to communicate fractured snippets of ancestral tales.

According to Robert Hunter, an archaeologist and the editor of the journal Ceramics in America, research suggests that the slipware pottery found in Philadelphia was made by French or German potters working in the city.

Slipware pottery is distinguished by the liquid clay applied directly to it as decoration.

The New York Times reports that 10 pieces of slipware pottery will be on display Thursday in a show called “Buried Treasure: New Discoveries in Philadelphia Slipware from the Collection of the Museum of the American Revolution.”