35 Pills - 35 Pots
By Andrew Guest

The motivation for making this series of pots came from a fascination with the used medicine blister pack. Firstly, from the angle of functionality and waste: that the product of an advanced system of manufacture – plastic and foil moulded to carry a very precise measurement of a drug (in itself a marvel of modern science and technology) - could so quickly become useless and ignored. Secondly, that every used pack carried the marks of their user’s relationship with the particular drug it contained – the pushing out of each dose. This gave the used pack a meaning not contained in the new (unused) pack, and gave the spent form of the used pack its own particular beauty.I kept one or more samples of the used blister packs from every blister-packed drug that I used over a 3-year period, made a plaster mould of each pack, and then took a clay cast from each mould. Four casts (plus a base) were then joined to make a ‘pot’, and the pot fired and then glazed and fired again. Two pots may look the same but each pot derives from the pack/s for a different strength of the same drug or from the same drug but manufactured or distributed by a different company.
Ranging from everyday analgesics such as paracetamol or ibuprofen through medicines for a variety of one-off infections, to the first drugs prescribed to me for Parkinson’s disease, the pots represent a sub-current to one period in my life, but also convey my appreciation of the achievement of modern medicine in bringing health or alleviating the symptoms of illness.
This display
Each shelf in this display contains a different group of drugs/pots. The top shelf is all paracetamol; the second shelf from the top ibuprofen and the antibiotics flucloxacillin and amoxicillin; on shelf three, drugs prescribed to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease – Ropinirole and levodopa/carbidopa; the bottom shelf has a variety of other medicaments of one sort of another including echinacea, paroxetine, and last but not least, Rennie’s.
The maker
I started making ceramics in 2004, towards the end of a career mostly spent promoting the work of creative people, including artists, architects, designers and makers. I wanted to make my own things. I was born in Edinburgh and have worked in London, Wales, Central Scotland, Edinburgh, and the North East of England and now live in North Berwick. If you would like more information about these pots or about my work in general, please contact me at andrew.guest2@btinternet.com.
Andrew Guest