No 16: Bowl, 1976 (P.77.2)

The interiors of wide bowls offer excellent surfaces for painting on. Alan Caiger-Smith works in tinglazed red earthenware, the white surface of which sets off his lustre brushwork and infuses it with light. This bowl is decorated with an interlocking, dynamic motif in broad sweeping and twisting brushstrokes worked in a dark red copper lustre. Two narrow bands of the same lustre are painted on the rim, and the centre is treated as a solid bull's-eye. The grey cast over the bowl's white areas is due to a smoke firing.