Bowl 1800 - 1815

Editor: This is a ceramic bowl, dating from about 1800 to 1815, made by Dawson & Co., and it's currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It strikes me as being quite domestic and intimate, like a little vignette. What do you see in this piece, especially from a formalist perspective? Curator: Immediately, I'm drawn to the compartmentalization of the image itself. Observe the carefully placed oval frames on the bowl's surface; they act as windows onto another world. This begs the question: how do these self-contained narratives play with the broader shape of the bowl? Editor: I hadn’t considered the impact of the oval frames so directly! I was busy looking at the people in the scene, the way the woman's dress falls... Curator: Precisely! Consider the interplay between the two-dimensional image and the three-dimensional object. How does the curvature of the bowl distort or enhance our reading of the painted scene? The drape of that dress gains volume. And what about the application of colour? Editor: The pink and gold feels very Romantic. It's quite delicate, isn’t it? Almost fragile, despite being ceramic. Curator: Yes, and notice how the gold leaf isn't contained within the oval, it sprawls onto the pastel pink of the body creating a sense of luxurious diffusion. This could perhaps serve as a clue to unravel its visual language. Does this give us a better way to understand the meaning in its structure? Editor: I see that tension now – a very deliberate containment alongside that extravagance! I hadn't noticed those little visual details initially, but they truly add to the overall reading. Curator: Exactly. By paying close attention to these formal elements, we can begin to decode the piece’s meaning, shifting beyond just seeing a pleasant genre painting.