Galena Pottery (Bowl) 1938

Alfred Koehn made this Galena Pottery Bowl sometime between 1855 and 1995 and, looking at it, I can almost smell the clay. There's something so fundamentally human about pottery, isn't there? To dig in the earth and shape something with your hands! I imagine Koehn at his wheel, the clay spinning, his hands coaxing this bowl into existence. The glaze, a mix of earthy greens and rusty reds, looks like it might have shifted and changed in the kiln, with the heat doing its own kind of mark-making. Those little variations, that's where the magic is. It's that conversation between the artist and the materials, the way they push and pull against each other, creating something new and unexpected. Pottery, like painting, is this dance between intention and chance. Each artist, throughout time, builds upon what came before, creating a continuous conversation.