Crock c. 1937

Yolande Delasser made this watercolour painting of a Crock sometime between 1855 and 1995. It’s the kind of painting that makes you think about the artist thinking, trying to get the shape just so – the way the curve of the vessel meets the lip, and how that edge then turns inward. I can imagine Delasser squinting, tilting her head, trying to nail the play of light on that rough, mottled surface. There’s a real tenderness in the way she’s rendered it. The muted palette speaks to the earthiness of the material itself; that ochre against the off-white paper is just gorgeous. And the details! The inscription near the top, the scalloped pattern around the belly of the pot, it all adds to this sense of a humble object, elevated through the act of close observation. It’s a quiet painting, but it hums with a kind of reverence, echoing the still life tradition where the everyday becomes extraordinary.