Historic Vessel Adaptation

The goal of this assignment was to create a piece of work taking inspiration from 3 different vessels from different times in history.

First Vessel:

Title: Serpentine blossom bowl

Period: Middle Minoan III–Late Minoan I

Date: ca. 1500 B.C.

Culture: Minoan

Medium: Serpentine

Information about the piece and photos were taken from metmuseum.org. This piece is on display at the Met Museum in gallery 151

Second Vessel:

Title: Pedestal Bowl

Date: 9th–10th century

Geography: Honduras

Culture: Ulúa Valley

Medium: Marble

Information about the piece and photos were taken from metmuseum.org. This piece is currently not on display.

Third piece:

Title: Terracotta dinos (deep round-bottomed bowl) and holmos (stand)

Date: ca. 630–600 B.C.

Culture: Faliscan, Capena

Medium: Terracotta; buccheroid impasto

Information about the piece and photos were taken from metmuseum.org. This piece is on display at the Met Museum in gallery 170.

I began by throwing my forms to build with. This was really interesting because I got to play around with throwing shapes I wasn’t used too. I watched a lot on how people throw the body’s of tea pots and pulling the clay out and then pushing it back in again.

Next I began to build my forms by first adding the ribs to the side. I used a similar technique that people use to pull handles and then added them to the main parts of the piece. Later after I had all the forms built I blended the ribs in more, and added the holes into the piece. I ended up liking the tear shape more then the narrower holes placed on the pedestal bowl I was taking inspiration from.

While I built my piece and let it dry I took one of my dryer bowls from another project and played around with layering black underglaze and carving it away and how it looked with the natural color of the clay. I really loved the way it looked with the black so I decided to use it for my final form. The black also went on very well only needing two layers.

I also did a test on a form mor similar to my final form just to make sure it transferred well. Since it was a very different shape from my first test. I really ended up liking the human touch the birds have carved onto the pot and final form. The ones on my small pot look like cheerful baby birds and the ones on my final form look more like older ancient birds.