Ceramics Days. Lectures on the history of Klaipėda stove tiles and contemporary ceramics
On Wednesday 5 August at 18.00, the Exhibition Hall of the Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre (KCCC) hosts a lecture evening in the “Ceramics Days” series, inviting you to look at ceramics from two different perspectives — contemporary art and cultural heritage. A pleasant, informative evening awaits, along with a surprise prepared by the ceramics studio “Mo molis”.
In the first lecture, “Klaipėda stove tiles — witnesses to reproductions of European artworks and to innovation”, Dr Raimonda Nabažaitė, archaeologist and research fellow at the Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology of Klaipėda University, will reveal what the stove tiles found by archaeologists tell us about the city’s history, its cultural connections and everyday life.
Dr Raimonda Nabažaitė is one of Lithuania’s best-known researchers of stove-tile making. Her doctoral dissertation on the phenomenon of stove-tile making in a European context was recognised as the best dissertation of the year in Lithuania, and her research findings have been published in a scholarly monograph. The lecture will describe how the tiled stoves that spread across medieval Europe changed the quality of people’s lives, how these technologies reached Klaipėda, and what influence they had on the everyday life and interior culture of the city’s inhabitants.
No less attention will be paid to the artistic value of the tiles. Archaeological finds show that their decoration reflects motifs, prints and iconographic subjects from the works of the most famous European artists of the time. This allows Klaipėda’s stove tiles to be seen not only as household objects but also as unique artefacts of cultural heritage, reflecting the spread of European art, technology and ideas.
In the evening’s second lecture, “Current trends in Lithuanian and international ceramics”, Rokas Dovydėnas — doctor of arts, interdisciplinary artist and curator — will present the most topical directions in contemporary ceramics in Lithuania and worldwide. He will discuss how ceramics today crosses the boundaries of traditional craft and becomes an interdisciplinary field of art in which design, technology, ecology, social themes and artists’ personal experiences converge.
During the lecture the audience will get to know new forms of artistic expression and the work of the most prominent Lithuanian and foreign ceramicists. It will examine how ceramics today reveals itself not only as a field of applied art or craft, but also as a form of contemporary art reflecting current questions of society, culture and the environment.
Rokas Dovydėnas has taken an active part in exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad since 1994. Since 2024 he has been Head of the Ceramics Department at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. His works are held at the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, the Grassi Museum in Leipzig, the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and the MO Museum.
ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES “CERAMICS DAYS”
From 5 to 8 August the KCCC organises a series of ceramics events designed to reveal the art of ceramics from historical, artistic and practical perspectives — that is, to introduce the people of Klaipėda and the city’s guests to local ceramicists, to the history of ceramics in Klaipėda and to its role in the context of contemporary art.
The series comprises: lectures on ceramics in the context of traditional and contemporary art; creative ceramics workshops; and a guided tour of the ceramicists’ studios of Klaipėda Old Town.
Tickets are sold by Bilietai.lt, ticket link: see here.
Please note that participants may appear in photographs and video recordings of the event published in various media. More information: www.kkkc.lt