In the past decade, Molly Hatch has become synonymous with contemporary ceramics, continuing her exploration of these methods and themes by applying them across an ever-evolving catalog of forms – plates, cubic vases with negative space imagery, pyramid forms that become three dimensional ceramic lenticulars. Her work has exhibited both nationally and internationally garnering her a loyal and fervent following. Hatch’s ceramic wall installations may best represent the “grey space” between fine art, contemporary design, and craft that has become de rigueur for museum collections and modern collectors. Using ceramic surfaces as both her canvas and subject matter, she appropriates and re-contextualizes historic pattern and imagery across compositions of hand-painted earthenware plates, the glazed surfaces of the plates collectively become a fragmented canvas for her delicate, painterly re-renderings.

Though the components of her works are, in effect, technically functional, they are ultimately not intended for use, but installed to be observed and studied. A set of formal and fine dinnerware is an anomaly to younger generations, having little or no importance to the relaxed and multicultural way that we now live our daily lives. What many museums hold in their archives can be hard for the public to appreciate. Hatch has in effect “reset the table,” by breaking the patterns of tradition and skewing the dinner services of old. She transforms and deconstructs what was once everyday and craft-based, helping us look at formality, history, and class through a contemporary perspective. Her process involves enlarging familiar patterns and motifs from traditional ceramics, textiles, fine art painting, and illustration, digitally igniting them in color, scale, and composition to create a new hybrid pattern. The precise balance of old and new opens a space to acknowledge our evolution in the 21st century in relation to aesthetics and ritual. 

Additionally, Hatch’s work subtly challenges long-held gender dynamics. Traditionally, women’s contributions in design have been labeled as “craft,” overshadowed by men’s “fine art.” Hatch subverts this by using ceramic plates—a symbol of feminine domesticity— to showcase typically male-dominated patterns, thereby elevating craft to fine art. Her thoughtful work underscores that her choice of “canvas” is as deliberate and significant as her imagery.

Hatch grew up on an organic dairy farm in Vermont surrounded by a startlingly diverse set of visual influences: the earthy reality of rural life, and the mysterious luxury of antique decorative objects in her family’s collection. Her mother’s family, prosperous Boston merchants, used Chinese export porcelain as ballast in their ships. Inspired by these two seemingly disparate family narratives, Hatch became an artist with a life-long passion for the decorative arts and the dialog between old and new. 

In 2013 Hatch had a solo museum exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance and was included in “New Blue and White,” a contemporary decorative arts exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 

Physic Garden, a monumental site-specific 456-plate work, was installed in the entryway of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2014. The work was commissioned by the museum and used two ca.1755 Chelsea Porcelain Factory plates from the museums Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics as inspiration for its floral motif.  Another commission, Caughly Landscape, was installed at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta. 

In 2017 Hatch installed her largest museum commission to date, titled Repertoire, in the historic Engelhard Court at the Newark Museum of Art in Newark, New Jersey.  Honoring the museum’s 107-year-tradition of collecting contemporary ceramic art, and commemorating the retirement of Curator of Decorative Arts Ulysses Dietz after 37 years, the three parts of the installation were inspired by global textiles in the Museum’s collection. The western panel, “Dyula Woven,” is based on a rare early-twentieth-century Dyula textile from Cote d’Ivoire, collected by the Museum’s founder, John Cotton Dana, in 1928. The central panel, “Qianlong Silk,” is based on a velvet throne carpet made in eighteenth-century China. The eastern niche will be filled with “Bergen Jacquard,” designed after a jacquard-woven blue and white coverlet made in Bergen County, New Jersey in the 1840s. Repertoire combines the iconography of the two great global art-forms of human creativity: clay and cloth. 

In 2022, Hatch took part in Making Place Matter, a three person exhibition, symposium, and publication inaugurating the new building of Philadelphia’s The Clay Studio, made possible by a grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Hatch created a new body of work for the exhibition centered around the concept of “Making Place Matter” through a pattern exploration of her personal heritage.

Hatch’s monumental work Dulcere, a 20 foot wide ceramic triptych, was created as a focal point of The Montreal Art Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition “Parall(elles) A History of Women in Design.” Organized in collaboration with the Stewart Program for Modern Design, this major exhibition celebrated the instrumental role women have played in the world of design through a rich corpus of art works and objects dating from the mid-19th century onwards. In addition, it examined the reasons why women are underrepresented in the history of this discipline and encourages an expanded understanding of what constitutes design. The 3 paneled work of hand painted plates is based on a pair of   Asian-inspired Minton “cloisonné” ware, designed by Christopher Dresser, c.1870.

Amalgam, specifically crafted in 2024 for the Sarasota Art Museum, spans two floors and comprises over 450 hand-painted earthenware plates in white, blue, and gold luster, arranged to create a cohesive ensemble framed by arched windows. Drawing inspiration from historical ceramics worldwide, including Ming-dynasty Hanap vessels, Moroccan Fassi ware, Dutch Delft vases, Mexican Talavera panels, and Japanese-inspired English ceramics, Hatch creates a cross-cultural narrative that underscores centuries-old global trade networks and shared aesthetics. The monumental work strategically incorporates empty spaces to highlight lines and patterns between adjacent plates, inviting viewers to engage with the composition from various vantage points. Through her meticulous research and critical practice, Hatch contributes to the elevation of fine art ceramics to a level on par with painting and sculpture.