The vessel «Traces», 2024.
Shmeleva Ekaterina Sergeevna (St. Petersburg).
Handmade modeling, chamotte, fragments of old porcelain, angob, transparent glaze. Weight: 15 kg. Height: 30 cm. Cost: 25,000 rubles.
The vessel «Traces» is dedicated to the theme of memory, temporality, time and combines traces of cultural material heritage (an ornament lined with fragments of old damaged porcelain found at a flea market in St. Petersburg) and physical origin (fingerprints of the author).
It was created in the technique of hand modeling, thick-walled, covered with transparent glaze inside, functional. It has a pronounced chamotte texture.
It can be part of museum or gallery exhibition projects, as well as be in private collections, integrating into the living environment of its owners.
The vessel is inspired by the abandoned ruined manors of the Leningrad region (Gostilitsy, Wrangel Manor). Their landscapes combine the remnants of human existence and natural traces that seem to cover up the presence of a person there in the past.
The idea to combine the material and physical traces of a person was reinforced by a trip to the Ilmen glint (a geological monument located in the Novgorod region on Lake Ilmen). Here you can find traces of living creatures, whose age, according to various sources, is more than 400 million years old. Several finds can be seen in the attached photos.
The shape of the vessel and the ornament are inspired by photographs and drawings of archaeological finds from the book edition «Eneolite of the USSR» (Nauka Publishing House, Moscow, 1982).
Connected with local history, the vessel is beyond time and space and prompts us to ask eternal questions: who are we, and what will we leave behind?
