The pick of York Art Gallery’s hidden collection of pots are going on show – chosen by a potter whose own work will stand alongside these older gems, reports JO PETRIE.

THE best collection of pottery in the UK outside London is housed in York, but not many people realise the treasures on our doorstep.

The collection is so vast that much of it has had to be stored away, out of sight to the casual visitor. But now a new exhibition by a young artist who has spent the past year searching through these city store cupboards will open the archive doors for us.

It was the job of Louisa Taylor, an artist who has done similar work with the Victoria and Albert in London, to bring up her favourites from the York Art Gallery and Yorkshire Museum vaults, and reawaken them in the 21st Century.

A new show at the New School House Gallery in York will display her favourites from the famous collections and her own fresh, colourful contemporary pieces.

Her pieces stand in simple, minimalistic contrast to the ornate and decorative vases she has chosen to work with, which are part of a 19th Century collection made by the York Philosophical Society.

In past exhibitions, she has played with ideas of shape and colour – new shapes can be based on patterns on the older pottery, such as birds and the branches they sit on.

Colours in the patterns are deconstructed into individual constituents which are then reproduced one by one, so that a library of colour builds up for each work.

This library is visually represented by lines of pots displaying varying degrees of each colour, lined up like books on a bookshelf, and placed on display with the work in the exhibition.

This is important to Louisa, who wants people in the gallery to see the story behind her research and the way her relationship with the historic piece was worked out.

One of her main interests is in this colour variation – and to create her own vision of what she sees represented in the original, she works out the ratios of colours it contains, and mixes and experiments with her own glazes.

“The colours are made by mixing raw materials, such as China clay, or Cornish stone, and oxides, metal ores like copper, iron or chrome which influence the colours which are blended.

“I love lime green, that is one of my colours, and purple, which is a tricky colour to get in ceramics. I am trying to make a colour that is the difference between the other colours, to make something that is richer, more unique,” she says.

The work is beautiful, serene, simple, highly conceptual and fundamentally functional, so even the most artistic of pieces are designed primarily to be held, used, washed up, stacked away, but can be left on display.

“What makes me happy is the thought that someone is using them. I go to so much trouble to design the shape and make it lightweight, get the handles just right because I want people to use the work. That is what is satisfying,” says Louisa.

And yet even when functional, her conceptual pieces are works of art. For example, take a supper set, named Oriole after Golden Oriole birds on an original 18th century design, and based on a supper tray servants would leave out for their masters on their days off.

It had many dishes around a central lidded pot, and would contain food that could be eaten as and when needed.

Louisa’s set has a clean white matt ceramic tray, with white matt central bowl, surrounded by glossy reflective bowls in varying shades of rich colour, shaped underneath to look as though they are floating.

Although it is functional, designed for flexible use for tapas or soup, it is a limited edition work of art – a dish of colours, moving around a still white centre like floating water lilies, designed to be kept on display.

This piece went on sale and sold for £1,500.

Louisa has certainly lived up to expectations after she left the Royal College of Art, where she did her Master’s degree and was tipped as a potential designer to look out for in the future.

She has been highly praised for her simple, clean, fresh and playful designs, even for her ‘bread and butter pieces’ which are smaller, far less expensive and less exclusive.

But it is Louisa’s aim to be able to work in as much detail and as conceptually as she can, in order to make a substantial body of work.

This will be the 30 year-old artist’s first solo show, but she has appeared in many group shows including the British Ceramics Biennale. Since training as an artist, she has worked in her own pottery and as a freelance for Wedgewood and a colourist for an American company.

Her incredible energy means she is also a part-time teacher at Brighton University and she has just finished writing a book on ceramics.

As well as functional, her pieces are playful in the forms they take and another of her main interests is with special shapes, bowls and pots with obscure functions, such as condiment sets, posset pots or pickle pots.

These may take the form of an image in a pattern on a historic set, for example the shape and design of a condiment set is around birds sitting on a branch.

Often there is a golden spoon with them, reflecting golden lines used in decorative patterns.

For this new exhibition in York Louisa thinks she will incorporate the different types of vases used in 18th century houses.

It is expected to be the perfect response to the historic collections housed in York, which are the result of the city council being left the Milner-White collection of early studio pottery, the WA Ismay collection of about 3,500 pots, and older pieces collected by the York Philosophical Society in the 19th century.

At the instigation of Robert Teed and Paula Jackson, who run the New School House Gallery, Louisa got together with York Museums Trust, which manages the Art Gallery and Museums in York, and they created the idea for the exhibition which is to go on show at their gallery next month.

Helen Walsh, assistant curator of decorative art in York Art Gallery, who helped Louisa search through the collection, said; “What we’ve been so excited about is working with a practising artist using our collection to inform her own work.

“We are also happy to support a local commercial gallery of which there aren’t many in York, with ambitious contemporary work.”

• Louisa Taylor’s exhibition at the New School House Gallery in Peasholme Green, York, runs from March 4 to April 16.