Artwork: Knochenporzellan by Felix Jung

About the Artwork

collaborative work with Marc Einsiedel I Einsiedel & Jung Installation photography on Hahnemühle, 2018. Edtion of 10 framed: 42 x 32 cm „Knochenporzellan“ (Bone Porcelain) deals with the use of resources and the relationship to their disposal and recycling on several timelines. The bones we recovered from the Thames mark a moment in the contemporary historical upheaval of industrialization. Until the 18th century, the port of the trading city of London was home to a number of slaughterhouses. These slaughterhouses took advantage of the strong tidal range of the Thames to dispose of slaughterhouse waste. Even today, there is an exorbitant amount of bones at the bottom of the Thames, which is remixed with each tide and rises to the surface at low tide. An import hit of the colonial power of the time was Chinese porcelain. The recipe of the sheer white and gossamer porcelain was secret and the material so much stronger than any produced from the northern hemisphere that England had great interest in being able to produce an equivalent material. Finally, in 1740, a London-based ceramist discovered that fired bone meal was an essential ingredient in China porcelain and was able to begin with the local production of equally high-quality porcelain. This porcelain was called "bone china" and changed the trade relationship between England and China. Now the bones had an added value and a disposal of the slaughter waste in the Thames was forbidden; with the bone meal obtained the porcelain production was started. Nowadays, it is mainly the end users who casually dispose of their waste in the Thames and thus hardly any new bones can be found, but vast amounts of everyday garbage can be found among old bones from the historic slaughterhouses on the bottom of the Thames exposed by the ebb tide. Today's slaughterhouse waste is used elsewhere. Inspired by this change, we produced flour from the last bones of the Industrial Revolution, sprinkled this flour into modeling clay, and ultimately used it to produce the ceramic works shown in our exhibition as packaging for fast food chains. Courtesy Alex Meurice (Slate Projects)