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The opening of the Westerwald Prize for European Ceramics 2009 exhibition in Höhr-Grenzhausen last Friday and being somewhat of a leading light in the ceramics scene over here having been press-ganged into opening a couple of ceramic exhibitions recently, I couldn’t really give it a miss.

The usual suspects there, including my friend Petra Bittl in a moderately foul mood (which is highly unusual for her, being one of the more placid and gentle souls I know)

“They could have spelled my NAME correctly” she said, flipping open the massively heavy (almost 700 applications, 200 artists selected, 500 individual items on display) catalog to “B”.

For “Bittle”

Which is outrageous.

Outrageous to spell ANYONE’S name incorrectly in a catalog for an event of this quality, but it’s not as if Petra’s an absolute unknown.

She’s frequently described as one of the country’s leading young ceramicists, she’s had major solo exhibitions (including one in the Leeds City Gallery in England) and if you’re selected to represent Germany as an Artist in Residence at the Fuping International Ceramic Museum in China…..

You get the idea.

But it’s probably my fault.

When she started working on her flask forms (that’s them in the picture), I piped up with “Hey, you can call them ‘Bittl Bottles’……”

The word must have got around, it’s evidently stuck on someone’s cranium and floated to the surface while they were proof-reading

And while we’re on the subject of “outrageous”:

Is it really too much to ask that Bernd Neumann, Minister of State for Culture does his HOMEWORK (for an event that’s under the patronage of Angela Merkel) and learns the CORRECT PRONUNCIATION of the prizewinner’s names.

When you travel Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines in Business Class, the first thing they do after you get settled in is to welcome you by name and ask you if they’re pronouncing it correctly.

It has everything to do with respect and it has everything to do with professionalism.

Laughing it off with “I have problems with foreign names” just isn’t good enough.

You’re representing the Chancellor. You’re not a stand-up comedian.

And it’s “Bittl”

Not “Bittle”

Write it out 100 times as punishment.