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Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.

Checkered Vessel


Floating Checks
1999

Medium/Technique Ceramics
Dimensions Height x diameter: 18.7 × 11.4 cm (7 3/8 × 4 1/2 in.)
Credit Line Gift of Velma Frank in memory of Robert Frank
Accession Number2021.343
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsContemporary Art
ClassificationsCeramics
The form of the teapot is, as the chair is for the designer or the pavilion for the architect, a site of experimentation for clay artists, and comparing teapots made by different artists is an interesting way to allow Museum visitors to understand moments of convergence and divergence in experimentation in one particular medium. Leslie Thompson’s practice was cemented in a class on Native American pottery where she determined her interest in surface designs on clay. Her bulbous ceramic forms are decorated with crisp geometrical patterns that play against one another and are based upon the work of M.C. Escher and artists of the Op-Art movement. Her pots are made by coating a high-fire porcelain vessel with black slip, then carving through the black, back to the original white surface while the clay is still soft.

Signed fired into the clay on bottom "Leslie" and "Kent"
Provenance2021, gift of Velma Frank, Lexington, MA to the MFA. (Accession Date: June 16, 2021)