Master ceramicist Andile Dyalvane will exhibit seven works in a group show at the English stately home Chatsworth House, titled Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth. Co-curated with writer, historian and curator, Glenn Adamson, the exhibition places contemporary works in direct relationship to the historic design at Chatsworth, creating unexpected connections with the house’s architecture, interiors, furniture, ceramics, as well its essential materials of glass, stone, wood, and light. A total of 16 artists and designers will have work on show, including Ini Archibong, Michael Anastassiades, Wendell Castle, Ettore Sottsass, Max Lamb, Joris Laarman, Jay Sae Jung Oh and Faye Toogood.

Chatsworth Estate, located within the Peak District National Park in England, has long been a centre for creativity, with successive generations of the Cavendish family commissioning art and design contemporary to their times. Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth reflects on that history and introduces new works to the spaces, continuing this legacy into the present day.

Dyalvane’s presentation for Mirror Mirror consists of five newly-commissioned glazed and hand-coiled stoneware pieces, together with two pre-existing works. His new series, titled Umwonyo (Crevice), grew out of a piece with the same title that Dyalvane created during his summer residency at Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, in 2019 and which is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The new works bridge the porcelain-like delicacy of Rhythms (2014), a large vase carrying precise incisions, and the gruff brutalism of his celebrated vessel, Cornish Waterfall (2019).

With their powerful sculptural forms and elongated shapes, Dyalvane’s works achieve the intended curatorial contrast seamlessly, being rich embodiments of both the contemporary and the historic. Their impressive forms offer a muted yet potent juxtaposition with the setting’s plethora of decoration.

Cornish Waterfall was also completed by Dyalvane during his eight-week residency at the Leach. Widely considered the birthplace of British studio pottery, Leach Pottery afforded him the opportunity to explore the commonalities between British studio pottery, traditional Japanese ceramics, and his own African-inspired techniques. Many of the works Dyalvane made during his residency include references to the coastal landscape and engage with the storied history of the studio.

Rhythms is one of the pieces completed by Dyalvane during his artist residency at the New Taipei Yingge Ceramics Museum in 2014. His signature ‘scarification’ on this work is a means of identifying with ancestors and channelling their powers as guides against negative forces. The vase is punctuated with the repetition of incised lines as well as being impressed with scattered letters, both of which evoke a sense of time, movement and poetry within the work.

Mirror Mirror will be presented in the house and garden at Chatsworth from 18 March to 1 October 2023.

Chatsworth Estate is perhaps most notable for housing one of Europe’s most significant private art collections, a collection recording the Cavendish family’s eclectic tastes and interests for over four hundred years. The estate contains works of art that span four thousand years, from ancient Roman and Egyptian sculpture, to masterpieces by Rembrandt, Reynolds and Veronese, as well as work by outstanding modern artists, including Felicity Aylieff, Lucian Freud, David Nash and Edmund de Waal.