Signature dishes

Distinguished potter David Walters finds a space for clay art and fine cuisine to collaborate

The concept of eating with one’s eyes takes on a whole new meaning with David Walters’s custom-made dinnerware. Under Walters’s creative touch, small, deliberate indentations suddenly become the perfect vehicles to neatly house different coloured dollops of jus, just as the subtly rounded sides of pasta bowls tastefully confine any serving of sauce with an inclination to grow legs and spill over the side.

Walters has been a potter for almost 40 years now. Collaborations with other potters, restaurants, architects and builders is hardly new to him, but working closing with restaurants such as Klein Oliphants Hoek, Rust en Vrede, Jordan Wine Estate and The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Francais really gives Walters a chance to knead together practical design with aesthetic charm.

“Ideally, the chefs come and spend a little time in the studio watching me make things, and out of that comes collaborative magic,” enthuses Walters. “I am a believer in classical design with a contemporary twist, like many of the chefs. The plates do not fight with the food, they enhance it. And you would be surprised how well this works. It makes all the difference – handmade food, made with passion, on handmade plates, made with equal passion.”

As the owner of The Ceramics Gallery in Franschhoek, Walters is a businessman as well as an artist, constantly juggling the joys of his craft with meeting orders and running the gallery.

“The trick is to find the balance between my own creativity, and the necessity of making numbers of plates, for example,” he confides. “But don’t get me wrong – I love making plates! It’s a challenge, its physically hard sweaty work, and it's incredibly satisfying to look round at the end of a day, and see what you have achieved.”

Creativity runs very deep in the Walters family. He met his wife Michelle when they were both ceramics masters. Michelle’s mother, Gillian Anderson, has been a potter all her life, making David and Michelle’s daughter Sarah (who also works and exhibits at The Ceramics Gallery) a third generation South African potter.

Pottery is certainly not an easy discipline. As Walters himself points out, it’s physically demanding, requires a certain knack for chemistry to cope with the glazes and can be challenging where skill levels are concerned. But it’s also hugely satisfying and when it’s done well (as one will see when one visits the gallery and sees Walters in action at his pottery wheel), it’s an art form like

no other.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Wednesday 9 March 2011.

The Ceramics Gallery is situated 24 Dirkie Uys Street, Franschhoek. For

more information, phone 021-876-4304, visit www.davidwalters.co.za or e-mail info@davidwalters.co.za.