Envelope Vessel: Spring

Akio Takamori's autobiographical envelope vases brought an inventive, figurative element to studio ceramics in the 1980s. He used the fronts and backs and interiors of a vessel in a way that charges its void with tension and meaning. Takamori's vessels are, in the artist's words, oddly "two-dimensionally oriented . . . but it's still a three-dimensional object . . . a cut-out drawing." He began working with these figurative drawings/vessels, incorporating memories of people from Japan and images from art history, often with a sensual theme as shown in this 1988 envelope vessel, Spring.