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Tall Cylinder Vessel
Potter: Spira, Rupert
Tall cylindrical pot of pale grey stoneware with incised poem and clear, crazed glaze
Pale grey stoneware, thrown in two parts (or more ?) and joined, with obvious throwing marks on the interior, incised decoration on the exterior, and clear, crazed glaze. Of tall, tapering cylindrical form with base recessed to produce a footring. One side is decorated with an incised poem beginning at the rim and forming a vertical rectangle approximately 62.3 cm high and 12 cm wide.
History note: Purchased by the donors from Adrian Sassoon, 14 Rutland Gate, London, SW7 1BB
Gift of Nicholas and Judith Goodison through the National Art Collections Fund
Height: 77 cm
Method of acquisition: Given (2005-07-18) by Goodison, Nicholas and Judith
21st Century, Early
Elizabeth II
Production date:
circa
AD 2003
Text from object entry in A. Game (2016) ‘Contemporary British Crafts: The Goodison Gift to the Fitzwilliam Museum’. London: Philip Wilson Publishers: Rupert Spira studied Ceramics at West Surrey College of Art and Design interspersed with a two-year period as studio assistant to Michael Cardew (1901–83). Between 1984 and 1996 he established and ran Froyle Pottery in Hampshire producing a highly successful range of domestic tableware and tiles drawing on a strong knowledge of South East Asian glazes. Spira established a studio under his own name in Shropshire in 1996, from which he developed his international profile as maker of both simple tableware and monumental bowls, jars and cylinder forms, which have won awards in major centres of ceramic art such as Faenza in Italy, Korea and Japan. The presence and quality of these individual works drew on Spira’s disciplined study of ceramic arts from many cultures and his wider reading of histories of thought and art. Words first appeared on Spira’s pots as thought-poems of his own making but gradually developed as calligraphic gestures, based on the words of other poets and writers which guided the inscriptions but remained illegible on the final work. In this particular approach to words, Spira can be seen attempting to layer meaning in ways reminiscent of the work of the seventeenthcentury Japanese potter Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743) or the repetitive Qur’anic inscriptions found on certain Islamic pots. Since 2007, Spira’s work has developed away from the pottery studio towards writing and lecturing within the philosophical and spiritual tradition of ‘non-duality’.
Contemporary Craft
Studio Ceramics
Rim
Diameter 14.2 cm
Base
Diameter 17.9 cm
Decoration
Throwing
: Pale grey stoneware, thrown, incised, and glazed
Glazing (coating)
Accession number: C.6-2005
Primary reference Number: 118973
Entry number: 636
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Tall Cylinder Vessel" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/118973 Accessed: 2024-11-25 17:19:22
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/118973
|title=Tall Cylinder Vessel
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-25 17:19:22|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Tall Cylinder Vessel</figcaption>
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