Harlan House is a potter who loves playing with fire – he’s been at it for over forty years.
His work is classic…porcelain fired with glazes that last forever because they are inspired by very old traditions.
Harlan’s works of art can be found in museum and art gallery collections throughout the world. He has received numerous awards; among them, The Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in Canadian craft in 1989 (now part of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts) and the Chalmers Award in 1997. He has lectured extensively about traditions in ceramics and has had over fifty one-man exhibitions of his porcelain. Made by hand, in the oldest of ways, each piece is unique. It is porcelain clay with feldspathic glazes fired beyond 1325 C° in a traditional kiln.
“Harlan House is one of Canada’s doyens of ceramics who has, over the past four decades, established an international career and a reputation for excellence in craftsmanship, marrying both Eastern and Western traditions while building a seminal legacy of form and function.” (Heidi McKenzie, Ceramics Monthly, October 2011; Download the full article here.
Harlan is featured in a recently published book called Master Ceramists: Porcelain: 500 Figures, Vessels & Sculptures by 40 Leading Artists. The book features Harlan’s work as well as 39 other artists who use porcelain. If you would like more information regarding the book please follow the link to the publisher Lark Books.
In addition to producing porcelain artwork, Harlan has also quietly been putting paint to canvas for longer than he has made ceramics.