Ian Garrett

Ian Garrett (b. 1971) is a South African master ceramicist from the Eastern Cape. His artistic journey reflects his lifelong passion for the ancient craft of hand-building, burnishing, and pit-firing ceramics. Garrett's work, deeply informed by archaic traditions, features nuanced, hybrid vessels that are both timeless and contemporary.

His pieces are characterized by original forms and highly refined surfaces, with glossy burnished areas juxtaposed against intricate swathes of matte-textured linear motifs. These lines, resembling fingerprints, cartographic contours, or magnetic force fields, seem to reveal hidden energies within the clay.

Garrett's academic background includes a BFA in sculpture from Rhodes University and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, where he graduated cum laude. His work is featured in public collections such as the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Gallery in Gqeberha, the Pretoria Art Museum, the Die Neue Sammlung Design Museum in Munich, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C.