Fired Abstract Sculptures

A wonderful three hooped ‘Pagoda Pot’ by Alan Ashpool, tiered forms made from a mixture of thrown and slipcast sections joined together, in an ecru / pale green colourway, with three matt green slip stripes. In very good condition with no chips or cracks. Alan Ashpool backstamp to the base. Dorset based potter Alan Ashpool, studied pottery under Heber Matthews (1905-1959), a foremost student of William Staite Murray and teacher of Hans Coper. During the 1960s Ashpool’s pots were sold in leading design stores such as Heal’s, alongside those of Dame Lucie Rie...

Contemporary abstract stoneware sculptures by Valéry Maillot, 2015. Uniques Pieces, La Borne, France. _______ Dimensions : (1) H 80 cm – (2) (3) H 11...

Wheel thrown, hand pierced ceramic tabletop sculpture/ vessel. This piece provides the perfect pop of color to any room. It can stand alone as an art piece, or with a candle, it can ...

Inspired by Mid-Century Modern design, the pierced collection is wheel thrown and hand pierced stoneware with a satin glaze. Small holes are created when the clay is still wet and th...

Inspired by midcentury modern design, the pierced vessel is wheel thrown and hand pierced stoneware with a Blush satin glaze that highlights the pierced pattern beautifully. It can s...

Title: Perianth 05 Year: 2021 Freeform ceramic sculpture made from a blend of porcelaneous and stoneware clays hand-collected by the artist in Minnesota. Its surface is hand-polished with diamond sandpaper to render a matte finish. Signed with the artist’s mark along the interior rim. Each piece is original and one of a kind. The forms in this collection are influenced by botanical morphology - specifically, the ‘perianth’ or floral envelope, whose petals serve to protect the most sensitive part of the plant before the eventual dispersal of the fruit’s seed. Powell’s sculptures seek to evoke a similar feeling of comfort and protection, serving as reminders of another time, both past and future, when one's family is close and the world feels safe, offering an escape from the ephemerality of the present which can leave one feeling vulnerable and exposed. The Perianth series functions both as a personal etiology for the artist and as a broader exploration of the universal themes of nostalgia, sentimentality, and familial memory In terms of process, Powell is interested in manipulating material into something it essentially is not - shaping crude, raw clay, still studded with naturally occurring sands and stones, into incredibly delicate forms. The resulting pieces are light and elegant — impossibly thin and balanced in surprising ways. Each sculpture’s surface, riddled with scrapes and craters, is astonishingly soft and sensuous to the touch and each piece feels precious in such a finessed and attenuated state. This concept of defied expectations extends beyond the physical properties of the work in that Powell is also investigating the mutability of perception, specifically in terms of Perianth’s overarching nostalgia and memory themes - - the present is intimidating in its authenticity, with no space for embellishment or fantasy, while memories of, and the subsequent yearning for, an era, place or person can become nebulous and fictionalized with distance and time. In this way, the works in this series act as physical manifestations of the unanticipated and misremembered. - - - - - - - - - - - - ABOUT THE ARTIST: Zoë Powell...