15in.H x 20in.W x10in.D
$2,500
a few years back I decided once again to conduct an experiment...
challenging myself to make some work which I thought, that most would agree,
contradicted what I had been doing recently...
it was a way of "checking" myself...
the lava /geological work I am doing is the culmination of 40 years of yearning
to see a piece from my hands of such quality and aesthetic clarity...
I have gotten there, am absolutely thrilled, but seem to be, maybe the only one who believes the validity of that...
many think I have lost my mind
and believe there is no "craftsmanship" in those pieces... I beg to differ...
so I made many and I mean many much more traditional forms
glazed them with a thick, multiple fired shino and searched for a beauty there
that I felt might stand as a counter to the lava pieces...
to "see" if I was correct in my thoughts...
what I found is that you can't escape yourself... the lava pieces were better than I imagined
and the Shino pieces served as a wonderful counter to them when shown together...
they both looked great... especially standing next to each other...
yet .....I can still remember a gallery owner rubbing a large oval shino bowl, definitely it was the best of the bunch, unlike anything I had ever made and asking me...
" Rob, do you have any new work?"...
this large bottle is a fine example of the surfaces possible from multiple firings and many coats of shino glaze in a wood kiln...
it has all the qualities I'm searching for in these shino experiments...
thick globular glaze, intermixed with surface texture, obscuring both and neither...
a hint of carbon in the middle
ash deposits on the shoulder, both melted and not quite...
orange cracks in the glaze coats from layers underneath
and the quiet ancient feel I always love in the good pots...
I hope you might like it...
