Sf. Pagottan Serpentijn kookpan van 300 H.L. met roodkoperen dubbele bodem Possibly 1922

Here's an anonymous photograph of an enormous cooking pot. I'm thinking of the anonymous maker, working without expectation of reward, driven only by the pleasure of creating. This is a vessel of industrial proportions, photographed in black and white, the texture of the wood grain and metal rivets almost palpable. Just imagine the repetitive motions of the person constructing this object; welding, hammering, and smoothing. Maybe this was a collective process, an accumulation of skill and shared purpose? I look at the way this pot is constructed, the repetition of form, the rivets and gauges and I feel that making is an act of inquiry, full of trial, error and intuition. You begin with an idea, a hunch, then you start building, adding, subtracting until the thing takes shape, like a painting. Each mark is a response to the one before, a conversation across time and space. It's an embodied expression of the artist's imagination, an invitation to see the world in a new way.