HANCOCK, MASS.- Throughout his career, James Turrell has pushed us to a new understanding of light, which in the case of Lapsed Quaker Ware is perhaps best understood by its absence. Looking at his work, you feel the gravitational pull of an object as dark as night, made from clay found deep within the earth. As art critic Brooks Adams noted, it turns out that looking at ceramics can be as hallucinatory an experience as floating in one of Turrell’s rooms. Like all conversations with Turrell, the story behind Lapsed Quaker Ware is expansive and enormous thinking, tinged with a science-inventor streak, but also quite intimate and personal. It made complete sense to display Lapsed Quaker Ware—a collaboration between Turrell and Irish ceramicist Nicholas Mosse to make crisp black basalt ware, inspired by eighteenth-century black basalt ware made by Josiah Wedgwood—in a former Shaker settlement-turned museum dedicated to a radical utopian nineteenth-century religious sect, and at MASS MoCA. The furniture is by William Burke and the Shakers.

James Turrell’s work has been exhibited in art institutions around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg, the National Gallery of Art in Canberra, and the Long Museum in Shanghai. One of Ireland’s most beloved potters, Nicholas Mosse established Nicholas Mosse Pottery in 1976 after training in England and Japan. All pottery undergoes a 20-step handmade process in the style of Irish spongeware, the traditional pottery of Ireland used in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In advance of the publication date, James Turrell and Nicholas Mosse will launch their book with a signing in the Brick Dwelling at Hancock Shaker Village on Saturday August 20, 2022 from 3PM-5PM. The schedule includes brief remarks by James Turrell and Nicholas Mosse at 3:30PM and old time mountain music provided by the Cherrywood Trio from 4PM-5PM. Books will be available for sale in Shaker Mercantile upon arrival for the book signing. Entry into the book signing does not include full admission to the Village. Masks are required.

Lapsed Quaker Ware is on exhibit at Hancock Shaker Village and MASS MoCA through October 31, 2022.