This chalice evokes religious rituals common to both Christian and pagan traditions, connecting this ceramic form to acts of spiritual adoration. The artist was nicknamed the “Mama of Dada” for her early collaborations with artists like Marcel Duchamp, and chose ceramics as her medium after taking an adult education pottery class in 1933. She enrolled after purchasing some dessert plates with luster glaze, for which she hoped to make a matching teapot. Though she never made that teapot, she dedicated herself to ceramics for the rest of her life. Her signature use of scintillating luster glazes lends her vessels an emotive, shimmering quality of iridescent euphoria.

---