American Pickle, 2007
Porcelain
Collection of the artist
American Pickle is a clever double entendre that references a historic pottery form—the pickle stand—and that serves as commentary on twenty-first-century global economics. As with so much of Erickson’s work, this virtuoso piece is the result of her effort to rediscover the sophisticated techniques used by early British and American potters. The stand re-creates the earliest American porcelain version that the Bonnin and Morris factory in Philadelphia produced around 1770. Western potters and patrons alike had long been fascinated by Chinese porcelain, whose recipe remained a mystery in the West until the early eighteenth century. Inscribed with the phrase “Made in China,” American Pickle reminds us of the considerable effect that Chinese porcelain had on trade in the colonial era. Yet it also refers to the historic origin of porcelain and to the material itself, “china” being an early term for porcelain. Finally, the phrase serves as an ironic reference to the tectonic contemporary shift of industrial production from the West to China.
