Beating swords into...fine China?

Sojourners Magazine, Nov/Dec 2002 by Berger, Rose Marie

The ceramic arsenal of Charles Krafft.

IT'S WEIRD. IT'S OUT THERE. It offends many and agitates most. But Charles Krafft's basic message is this: The way to end war is to gild the guns (or slip-glaze them a Delft blue and white). Seven years ago, Seattle-based ceramicist Charles Krafft enrolled in a beginner's china-painting class offered by the elderly ladies of the Northwest China Painters Guild. Within a year, Krafft produced The Porcelain War Museum, a re-creation of weapons-in porcelain-inspired by his visits to war-besieged Sarajevo and his work with Eastern European artists.

"The Porcelain War Museum project has been evolving into a conceptual statement about the global arms trade," explains Krafft. "My aim has been to produce a delicate arsenal of life-sized ceramic weaponry so gorgeous and patently functionless that they will bedazzle and confound everyone who sees them." Next, he'd like to make full-size Scud missiles and nuclear bombs in pure white porcelain.

Beneath his edgy art, Krafft explores the nature of belief. His work asks how people acquire belief systems-- political, ethical, or religious-that define not only their personalities, but often the course of their lives.

-Rose Marie Berger