Certosa III is a ceramic installation that consists of four vessels and two plates. Each object was made from Limoges porcelain clay and turned by Edmund de Waal on a potter’s wheel in his studio. The reverse of the larger plate is gilded, and this creates a reflection of warm light against the wall behind the installation, which contrasts with the cool pallor of the unglazed vessels. The title of this work evokes a type of Carthusian monastery (certosa means ‘charterhouse’ in Italian). Examples exist in Bologna, Florence, Parma and elsewhere, but the most famous is the functioning monastery called Certosa di Pavia in Lombardy, which gives its name to the village nearby. The artist has said that the title and the work were inspired by ‘a vague memory of monks in white’.

Since he began to create installations with clusters of ceramic vessels in his Cargo series of 1996 and 1998, de Waal has explored a variety of framing devices. He has often used glass or Perspex cases with wood or metal frames, variously free-standing and wall-hung, as well as creating open-sided aluminium shelves. Certosa III is arranged on a painted wooden shelf, and the simplicity of this arrangement is perhaps most resonant of all de Waal’s installation techniques with a domestic space. The modest size and proportions of the installation also indicate a homely decorum rather than the epic presence of his work intended for the gallery or museum.

De Waal has occasionally added gilding to his porcelain vessels since at least 2005, often by creating a gilded surface at the rim of vessels or the edge of potsherds. This practice resonates with the historical enrichment of porcelain at a time when it was exclusively a product of China, and its extreme preciousness in the West encouraged elaborate and expensive settings. One famous example is the silver foot, handle, spout and cover that were added to an item of fourteenth-century Qingbai porcelain known as the Fonthill Vase (National Museum of Ireland, Dublin). In 2005, de Waal’s installation Arcanum at the National Museum of Wales consisted of twenty-four porcelain vessels with gilding. Four of the installations in his exhibition Edmund de Waal: a thousand hours, held at Alan Cristea Gallery in 2012, included elements of gilding. Since 2014, he has used gilding with increased frequency and Certosa III can be identified within this trajectory. Since then de Waal has included various kinds of metal as independent elements in his installations, and a work such as an everywhere of silver (2024) included lead, gold and silver alongside porcelain. The use of such precious materials is partly an index of his critical and commercial success, which have in turn widened the scope of his activities and provided greater means to achieve his most ambitious ideas.