GOTTFRIED PALATIN

Gottfried Palatin is a designer/artist, who is passionate in developing and making porcelain objects of applied arts.

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After attending a college for ceramics and working in a renowed porcelain-artstudio, he developed his own formal language.

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1993 marked the beginning of Gottfried Palatin´s cooperation with international design companies, such as Mercantile, J&L Lobmeyr, WG/Grundmann, WMF, Authentics etc., which has resulted in many design products in various materials.

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As of 2000, Palatin has been dedicating himself again to his favourite materials glass and porcelain and thus been focusing on the cooperation with manufacturers, as their work style, i.e. reaching highest quality by working manually, fully correspond with his GP´s approach. Subsequently, numerous, highly sophisticated, manufactured items and collections have been created in cooperation with the renowed manufacturers „Wiener Porzellan-Manufaktur Augarten“ and the Bavarian crystal glass manufacturer „Theresienthal“, that are fully in line with the respective traditions while pointing towards the future due their novelty ideas and modern shapes.

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It is exactly the challenge of finding the limits of feasibility on the one hand while exceeding them on the other that GP has best succeeded in especially as regards his own develoments with porcelain. However, the cooperation with manufacturers also means to respect a company´s individual feasibility as well as its boundaries and to accord them with one's own vision.

 

In fact, throughout his cooperation with manufacturers, Gottfried Palatin has never lost track of continuously developing his own exciting and precious porcelain objects and keeps steadily optimising his very personal objects at the highest standard of porcelain technology to delight the spectator with serene and unpretentious beauty.

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He finished his cooperation with manufacturers in 2014 in order to fully concentrate on his own creating of porcelain objects.

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In 2020 Gottfried Palatin was inducted into the Homo Faber Guide, a leader in excellence in arts and crafts in Europe, by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship due to his outstanding work and lasting impact.

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Form finding as a mental process. Gottfried Palatin´s liberation of form on the way through experience

Rainald Franz

Curator Glass and Ceramics Collection

MAK - Museum of Applied Arts Vienna

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Innovations in applied art and design are achieved by the appropriation of production techniques, knowledge of the material and - ulitmately - the liberation from its constraints.

Following a consistent process and thus overcoming the boundaries by being aware of them and "abloishing" the conditions in the Hegelian sense, Gottfried Palatin has found radically new forms and surfaces.

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After completing his studies, Gottfried Palatin has worked sucessfully as a product designer for renowned glass and ceramic manufacturers such as J.& L. Lobmeyer, Theresienthal and Augarten Porzellan from 1993. Them combination of both the critical analysis of the production processes that is inherent in the manufacturing process as well as the deepening of the necessities of the respective material keep leading him to the mastery of materials and the way of thinking that always result in new solutions in both form and surface design. The outcome therof has been the stunning production of series augarten that are characterized by haptics, shapeliness and clarity.

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Gottfried Palatin´s consistent dialogue with the production- and executing departments of the highly specialised porcelain manufacturing industry, which has been ongoing since 2000, as well aas his empirical approach to developments in mould making and glaze technology have ensured that he has gained a better understanding of the potential the material offers. When producing his various sets and individual objects at the Augarten Porcelain Manufactory in Vienna, he took the manual production of porcelain to the limits of the possible while always bearing issues such as manageability, haptics and the beauty of form in mind.It thus does not comes as surprise that his Porcelain Set No.40 has put Gottfried Palatin on the same level as famous designers such as Josef Hoffmann or Franz Zülow and Ena Rottenberg.

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In his small series that Gottfried Palatin has been designing and producing since 2014, he has consistently pursued his process of exploring the vast potential of porcelain and glaze techniques beyond the confines of manufactory production. Accordingly, the series of 38 porcelain boxes, which was only completed in 2019, offered a pleasant challenge for the artist. In fact, throughout the developlment process, Gottfried Palatin optimized the fitting accuracy of the lid and bottom of the boxes with unprecdented precision while taking the 15% shrinkage of the volume of objects during the porcelain firing process at 1300 degrees Celsius into account. The alabaster moulds for the porcelain casting, which were made at 100% accuracy, ensured the success of the outcome. Finally, the new sculptural impression goes hand in hand with the perfect glazes that Gottfried Palatin had especially developed therefor and which further underline the clarity of the form.

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Gottfried Palatin exceeds the limits of the manufactory production in porcelain precisely in his small series, which he himself controls in every detail. In this way he succeeds in setting new standards of craftsmanship quality for the material. Thus, form finding becomes / has become a means of mastering the material and overcoming the limits set by routine and tradition in the course of a creative thought process. Accordingly, it ist both the individual solution for the form problem and the overcoming og the limitations that faciliate innovation.

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At the interface between craftsmanship, design and art ceramics, Gottfried Palatin´s oeuvre thus qualifies itself as part of the great tradition of Viennese ceramics, which creates its aesthetic innovation based on both the mastery of materials and an new way of thinking about form in interrelation with the craft.

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