Nick Cave Details New Passion Is Staffordshire-Style Ceramics: “There’s No Irony to It”

Remember when, during the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone got into little hobbies like baking sourdough or gardening? Well, for gothic punk icon Nick Cave, his COVID escape was, as it turns out, hand-crafted Staffordshire-style ceramic sculptures.

Yes, as strange as it may seem — or may not seem, if you’re up to date with his vibe on the British royal family — Cave has a genuine, “not ironic” passion for making the Victorian Era figurines, and has refined the practice into quite the art form. In 2022, he unveiled a 17-piece series titled “The Devil — A Life,” which is now on display at the Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, Netherlands.

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Speaking about his newfound work as a ceramist in an interview with The Art Newspaper, Cave explained that it came about as “a kind of yearning I had to get back to some sort of visual art that I had abandoned in my early 20s, when I studied at art school.”

As for how he settled on Staffordshire-style creations, specifically, Cave suggested that his initial motivation simply stemmed from sitting around his house during the pandemic, “looking at one of these Staffordshires just thinking, ‘I can do this.’”

To that end, speaking about early experiments with ceramics in his childhood — which produced works that his mother cherished until her death — Cave conceded “there was a sentimental tug as well,” but reinforced that “mostly it was just that I thought, ‘Fuck, you know, it can’t be that hard to make one of these things.’”

Once he got into it, the story of his “The Devil — A Life” series began to unfold in a therapeutic way, connecting Cave both to his handicraft and his grief in the wake of the 2015 death of his son, Arthur.

The series depicts a central character, a “devil,” who grows up, takes a bride, fights a war, sacrifices a child, feels remorse, bleeds to death, and is ultimately forgiven by the child. “This ended up being something about culpability and forgiveness around the death of my son,” Cave explained. “That was something that I could never quite get to in my songwriting. To me, these became acutely personal.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Cave touched on his work ethic regarding the ceramics, which mirrored his dutiful approach to songwriting. “I got up every morning, drove to Camberwell [south London] in the morning and worked there for… it ended up taking about two years,” he said. “My manager was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘I’m going into the ceramics business.’ It didn’t seem like the most, from his point of view, sustaining way to spend two years. But anyway, I just got totally swept away with it. It really felt like unfinished business.”

Meanwhile, Cave is gearing up to hit the road with the Bad Seeds in April for their tour dates in support of Wild God, during which Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood will once again fill in for bassist Martyn Casey. Get tickets here.

Last month, Cave contributed to Los Angeles Rising, a benefit album for victims of the LA wildfires that also featured PJ Harvey, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, DEVO, Primal Scream, and more.