Aran Vase

Aran Vase

Here's the other object I started on the Eurostar.

I like pottery. I was thinking about the beautiful pots that archaeologists sometimes find in tombs, and how distinctive they often are to particular times and places, but also how regular; so that styles and shapes of pottery can date a site with surprising precision.

I was also thinking about the way textiles hardly ever survive. And the way that the women and men who knitted traditional seafarers' garments of the British Isles would start with a more or less fixed basic design and set of techniques that worked well with the materials, and then execute them with a range of motifs and variations that they personally favoured, or that they learned from family members or friends, or that their own invention suggested. Always bearing in mind that the result had to be a practical and beautiful garment, acceptable to the intended wearer. More or less the same conditions, then, that governed the production of pots.

Glasses

Anyway, this came to mind, more or less as it looks, although I work out a lot of the details as I go along. It has four little feet so that it stands up nicely, and the inside is the same shape as the outside.

Generally, it's designed to be looked at, but it's also an excellent place to put down a pair of glasses.

I'm going to be working on some more designs like this.