Jug c. 1938

Howard Lumbard, sometime between 1855 and 1995, made this watercolour of a Jug. There's something so beautiful about the unassuming colour palette, isn't there? It’s almost entirely muted earth tones with only a handful of hues, which speaks to this beautiful understanding of artmaking as a process of distillation. The textures are what really make this sing for me; the transparency of the glaze achieved with thin washes of watercolor which pool at the edges to create a convincing sense of light. The delicate rendering of the ceramic surface is just lovely, and the slightly wonky asymmetry of the floral decoration adds a nice touch of humanity. If you look closely, you can see how the artist has used a dry brush to create a subtle sense of roughness, particularly around the base. There’s an enduring quality to this; I’m reminded of Giorgio Morandi and his arrangements of bottles, or maybe even some of the folk art traditions that continue to fascinate and influence artists today. Really, it's a wonderful example of how much can be achieved with what at first appears to be so little.