Top of Letter Sander c. 1940

Editor: This is "Top of Letter Sander" by Cora Parker, around 1940, a watercolor and drawing of what seems like a ceramic piece. There’s a kind of humble simplicity to it, yet the star-like pattern of holes draws you in. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see an echo of ancient ceramic practices rendered through a mid-century lens. Notice how the circular form, an unbroken wholeness, is punctured by a star. The star, a powerful and ubiquitous symbol – hope, guidance, the celestial – here deliberately domesticated, confined within a practical, earthenware object. Does that confinement strike you as meaningful? Editor: It does, now that you mention it. It feels like a conscious decision to bring the infinite, the cosmos, down to earth, to something tactile. Like finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Curator: Exactly! And consider the colour palette. The earthen tones, the unassuming materials. It all speaks to a desire to imbue the everyday with meaning, a cultural impulse that spans millennia, linking us back to the earliest potters marking their creations with symbolic designs. The seemingly functional can still hold symbolic weight. Editor: So it's less about the object itself and more about the layers of meaning we project onto it, based on its shape and symbolic carvings. It’s a comforting idea. Curator: Precisely. By understanding its cultural context and symbols we see that objects – as in our lives – connect our present back to historical memory. Editor: Thank you. I never would have picked that up just looking at the watercolor, this gives a new appreciation.