In this first collaboration, ‘A Chunk of Silver and Some Mud’, former classmates Nicolas Soni and Gillian Maradyn-Jowsey use their immeasurable appetites for objects and food to cook up a dinner service to feast one’s eye upon. This service will consist of cast and forged silverware made by Toronto-based sculptor Soni, and handbuilt ceramic dishes made by Lunenburg-based ceramicist Maradyn-Jowsey.

The dishes are generous in scale, featuring a light fingerprint-dusted texture and a buttery-soft matte glaze with dollops of colour splashed across them. Robust in form yet soft in sensibility, these ceramics are made for everyday dining and special occasions alike. The cutlery draws from Early-Modern English flatware and carpentry tools, emphasizing intuition and playfulness. These implements have been made so as to consider their material heritage while reimagining the conventions around them.

The combination of these handmade ceramics and silverware will elevate and energize the day-to-day ritual of eating. This collection will be shown at Ten Restaurant in Brockton Village. Pieces will be hung vertically upon a temporary wall in reference to fine china displayed in a domestic setting.

Maradyn-Jowsey’s multidisciplinary ceramic-based art practice curiously resides at the intersection between whimsical contours and crisp design. Through clay, she records mishmash mark making with handbuilding—pinching, squeezing, and smoothing surfaces into forms that act as both functional and sculptural objects for domestic spaces and day-to-day use. Soni’s work is concerned with the material culture of food, its production, and its consumption. His research draws from both traditional sources as well as the everyday act of eating.

‘A Chunk of Silver and Some Mud’ is the marriage of both grand occasion and comfort — the ideal meal where affectation has been superseded by merriment and delight.