-Prince of Wales Investiture Bank- still bank c. 1969

This polyhedron-shaped bank was made by Wedgwood to commemorate the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969. This piece totally embodies a kind of material-based thinking that I love to see. The pale green glaze feels so grounded, so material. The surface is matte, and the letters and symbols in low relief appear to grow organically from the green. This little bank isn’t pretending to be anything it's not. You can almost feel the clay, how the artist has worked with it, and how it must have felt in their hands. The dragon and the Prince of Wales feathers could be right out of a Celtic illuminated manuscript, but feel totally contemporary in this design. Like Jasper Johns using encaustic, the artist is using the materiality of their chosen medium to speak to and from an embodied place. In many ways it reminds me of the work of Rosemarie Trockel, using basic materials in very sophisticated ways. It's art that you can really feel.