This set follows the "Oriental Handled Basket" prototype I posted in October of 2011. The lids use the basic design of the Handled Basket piece but incorporate a new base design and techniques. After my last posting I started working on several new design ideas following some antique oriental vessel forms. I turned several developmental pieces exploring different forms and surface enhancement techniques. One day I started swapping lids and bases around. When I tried the Handled Basket lid on a funnel shaped base that had been textured and branded with Ginkgo leaf shapes, I quickly recognized I had combined two ideas to a perfect match in design. Creativity and design takes some strange paths sometimes, and this was one of them.
The set has been scaled so each piece is reduced by 15% from the prior piece in the set. The largest lid is 5 3/4" in diameter, and the smallest is 4 1/4". The bases were turned, natural finished inside and then the ginkgo leaf patterns were branded on the outside. The leaf veins were burned with a skew tip inside the brand. The field areas around the leaves were textured by stippling with a tiny carbide bur that was powered by a NSK Presto carver. This proved to be quite time consuming when applied to all three bases. The bottoms of the bases were airbrushed with a dye. The textured and branded sides were finished in black.
The lids were quite complicated to turn. They had to be turned thick enough to support the inside lip, beads and stippled texturing on the outside ring and yet be consistently thin (1/16) for the pierced sections and thick again for the beaded base of the handles. Like the bases, the lids were finished with airbrushed dye and black. The set was recently featured in the Bakersfield Museum of Art's "Man-Made Vessels by California Craftsmen" along with turned work by Dewey Garrett and two glass and ceramics artists.
Your comments and critiques are welcomed.
