'A sounding line', by Edmund de Waal

In the house, you will see a fascinating new installation of ceramics, called 'a sounding line', by Edmund de Waal.

The Duke and Duchess and the fascinating new installation of ceramics, called 'a sounding line', by Edmund de Waal

Read the article 'cabinets of curiosity', written by Fiona MacCarthy.

The artist Edmund de Waal writes:
Chatsworth is full of porcelain. Porcelain rests in vitrines and on desks, on mantelpieces and corbels, within fireplaces, on dining tables and stretching up to the ceiling in the porcelain room. There are formal garnitures and groupings, dinner services and wayward accretions, beautiful singletons and impressive masses: porcelain is as much a part of the texture of the place as are the pictures and the furniture.

This new commission, a sounding line, came out of a series of animated conversations with the Duke and Duchess, and through the agency of Joanna Bird. The intention was to bring an installation of my porcelain into Chatsworth. Installation is 'art-world speak' for a sculptural grouping of work: it seemed crucial to find a way of resonating with the historic collections in a strong, sympathetic, contemporary way.

The Chapel Corridor with its pairing of fireplaces and high corbels - and its softly modulated light - was the setting chosen. I've always wanted to make a piece that you walk along, where variations in form and colour and tone reveal themselves as you move and this is what I have tried to do. The feeling that I have is one of music echoing through the house - sounding and resounding. So the two chimneypieces and the high corbels have groups of twenty-four vessels that are loose 'musical' reflections of each other. The vessels are glazed in a spectrum of blues and grey, differing in mattness and brightness; colours based on the celadons of the Far East. Within the chimneypieces are two groups of very large white and cream-glazed lidded jars, informal echoes of the formal 18 th century groupings of jars far away in the State Rooms. These large jars have touches of gilding on the added markings: these are my 21st century take on the gilded armorial porcelain of the house.

I hope that a sounding line acts as you walk along it. It is a very personal and very particular reflection on Chatsworth and its porcelain.