Visitors to 'Clay Worlds' - this year's summer exhibition at Schloss Köpenick - will encounter a multifaceted visual world spanning several centuries. Moresca dancers, knights, and couples appear alongside putti and graceful young girls, while religious and mythological motifs are alternated with quotidian subjects. The exhibition is focused on figurative ceramics from six centuries. Many of the objects on view are from the Kunstgewerbemuseum's extensive holdings and have not been shown for sometime.
Floor tiles and wall reliefs will be on display, as well as furnace tiles and ceramic moulds from fired clay. The fusion of container and figure reached its high point in Art Nouveau. Small ceramic sculptures occupy a special place in the exhibition. Beginning in the Renaissance, and increasingly during the Baroque period, artists used the plastic material of clay for their first rough draft of their sculptures. These 'bozzetti' (from the Italian 'bozza' for 'draft, sketch') are contrasted withclay models from the 18th century, which served as detailed prototypes for works later executed in porcelain or bronze.