A broken cup.

Pottery shards are really extremely interesting objects. Most of human history before writing first appeared is dated and ordered using finds of broken everyday crockery. Fired clay vessels have the combined characteristics of at the one hand being extremely durable to erosion, and on the other hand being brittle and easily breakable. This means that pots and mugs were made in great numbers since they often broke within a few years, and then thrown away in rubbish heaps where they have lasted almost unaltered through the millennia. Very handy for archaeologists.

Very simple abstract sculpture.

Taking this durability into account, I wanted to make a piece that records something for the future. The very simple shapes of the broken shards also inspired me, but of something much bigger. Standing there spread out on a flat surface, they reminded me somehow of icebergs adrift in the ocean. Since these will probably soon be as rare as the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger, I figured it worth trying to capture something of the silent grace of these floating giants for our descendants. Since Jana Middleton, who handed it in, is an artist herself, I played with a minimal approach, of just changing the surface texture and then tilting the shards a bit so as to look more adrift, which nonetheless required a substantial amount of work, given how durable and resistant ceramics are.

Object no. 19