Hans Vangsø’s powerful pots have a strongly alchemic quality, bowls, jars and bottles that have a potent sense of the geology of clay and the geology of the land, more specifically in his case the texture and individuality of Mols, in north Jutland, where Vangsø lives and works. It is an ancient and remote landscape, and these pots, though they acknowledge the more rugged aesthetic of Japanese wood firing, also have a very Danish sense of form and a Northerner’s potent feeling for his own terrain, both of place and of ceramic history. Born in 1950, Vangsø studied at the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Aarhus from 1972-6, where he was taught by Gutte Eriksen.  Like Eriksen, Vangsø is very clearly a ‘fire’ potter, the kiln very much a place of high drama which radically transforms surface and texture. The pot is turned into a kind of landscape of its own.

The work of Hans Vangsø, basically founded in the Japanese tradition, shows the roots and soul of ceramics. The combination of great simplicity in form and rich texture in glazes, and above all, the total melting of glaze and body, render Hans Vangsø's works unique. The very much alive surface of the glaze is obtained in the firing methods, developed over years and years, each piece being fired several times in a homemade gas kiln, wrapped in paper-saggars with salt, seaweed, metals etc. at 1300 degrees C. At first glance his works show an immediate Asian influence, in form and glaze. However taking a closer look, one senses the strong and deep underlying personal feel of the North. His work demonstrates a rich and balanced tradition of color and tone, inspired by Nordic nature and the natural minimalism of Danish culture.