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| Adil Writer |
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THE FIRE WITHIN
Adil Writer arrived at Ray Meeker’s Golden Bridge Pottery, Pondicherry in Southern India in 1998 with a Masters degree in Architecture from the University of Houston, USA and a high profile as one of Mumbai’s leading architects and interior designers. Pure chance led him to the ceramics studio first in 1994 but its impact was life changing.
“My cousin wanted to enroll for Meeker’s course and I got her an application. As it was lying unused for over a year, I impulsively applied for the course,” he recalls.
“I managed to convince Meeker to accept me in two years time! A whimsical move to study clay work, and a life changed tracks.”
Ray Meeker admired Writer for his determination and enthusiasm.
“The whole of our first seven months together at the Golden Bridge Pottery was a battle of wills,” Meeker recalls.
“Next year Adil came back for more and by round two he had changed.
“His ideas were still way ahead of his technique, not uncommon for those who have already had a successful career, but now he was ready to admit that he did need to understand the basics if he wanted to get beyond the myriad technical pitfalls inherent to high fire glazed ceramics.”
From Golden Bridge Pottery Writer went on to form Mandala Pottery in Auroville, India with three other ceramicists: Anamika; Chinmayi; and Krishnamoorthy.
What followed was a dedicated approach to technique by the blossoming ceramicist, which Meeker says equipped Writer with the skills to achieve ambitious projects with an ease most take a lifetime to achieve.
“(In a recent exhibition) Adil has made a series of jaunty dancing stone teapots that seem to defy gravity,” he says.
Writer’s greatest fascination with the ceramic process is with what he has limited control over.
“For me, it is fire more than anything else,” he says.
“When you load a kiln for firing, there is no way of knowing how fire will transform your work; what it will give back. We potters call it the gift of fire.”
Alongside his plates, platters and wall plaques, Writer has developed a reputation as a ceramicist who strives to step beyond the barriers of convention and tradition.
“I think eventually it would be interesting to amalgamate architecture and ceramics…much as Antonio Gaudi’s sculptural architecture did all over Barcelona; something that has been indelibly stamped in my psyche ever since I had a dharshan of it recently…it was one of those times when equanimity went out the window!,” Writer says.
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