Pocket globes and porcelain maps – new exhibition combines cartography and ceramics

Maps can excite, engage, inspire, motivate and document history.

On display in the Director’s Gallery from Tuesday 30 April, a new exhibition by artist and Society Fellow Loraine Rutt, Mapping Earth, celebrates the craft of mapping and explores how maps influence our sense of place, belonging and identity.

Combining cartography with traditional ceramic techniques, the exhibition will display Loraine’s intriguing limited-edition globes and wall reliefs, inspired by satellite data, astronaut observations, historic cartography and social research. Whether celebrating momentous voyages or focusing on environmental or social inequalities, her work explores how maps influence how we connect to places. 

Loraine was recently selected as a Master Craftsman by Homo Faber, and has received commissions from the Royal Observatory and World Skills Organisation. Her pieces have been described as ‘work which excitingly illustrates the fusion of concept, content and traditional craft’.

A portfolio of Loraine’s work can be viewed at www.lorainerutt.com and her work can be purchased at www.thelittleglobeco.com.

Society Fellows and Members can see the exhibition on weekdays between 10.00am and 5.00pm until 6 September.