Monika Patuszynska actively seeks out difficulties posed by working in porcelain, difficulties that often cause ceramists to stick to tried and tested ways of making. She wants the problems, she literally sets herself tasks that are so challenging she needs a plan B and C to fall back on. Her experience of porcelain factories led her to the conclusion that perhaps those seams and edges from the casting process, those that we strive to remove yet so persistently re-appear, are in fact an essential part of the clay, its tendency, its want. So, like the antithesis of a porcelain factory worker she sets about smashing the moulds, sawing them into shards, then piecing them back together to create new formations, to make new molds. She actively seeks the seams, edges and broken textures to create dynamic and fluid forms. The process is like fitting together an awkward, jutting jigsaw. That it works, that the porcelain cast survives with contrast in thickness and texture is perhaps in part due to serendipity but more essentially, to an exceptional knowledge of the material. 

Dr Natasha Mayo, a senior lecturer at the National Centre for Ceramics, Wales, practitioner, writer and researcher into ceramics and creative pedagogies.