A HEALTHY ADDICTION

Daily Bread

Jitka Palmer (Czech)

Daily Bread is all about artist Jitka Palmer’s love affair with the staff of life.

While in London in 2023 to take a short art history course at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, I was drawn to Contemporary Ceramics, a gallery run by the Craft Potters Association.

There was something immediately comforting about this bowl—its warm colors, and the painterly style of the women’s faces that seemed to look right at me from both the bowl’s interior and exterior. And then I noticed the loaves of bread.

More on ‘bread’ from Jitka in her reply to my later email…

I love bread and bakeries. It started more than 15 years ago when I asked my local bakery in Bristol if they would let me come and sketch them at work. They agreed. So I went to the bakery at 3:00 am, and watched and sketched them at their busiest time. It was fascinating. From that memory and material, I made several vessels and pastel paintings. Some of my vessels were large, telling the story of baking. Some played with the idea of the bread being blessed by an angel. Some are about the simple pleasure of eating bread.

Although Jitka holds an English ceramics degree, earlier medical training in her native Czechoslovakia might help explain her artistic focus on the everyday-ness of human life.

Detail of bread on the bowl’s exterior.