The Unknown Captive Pod Vase by Michael W. Moses Pottery Ocean Springs, MS

 Here I have a new piece that I call "The Unknown Captive Pod Vase".  Here I have once more sculpted a Neo Victorian objet d'art that has a natural organic quality that makes it seem to be some type of quasi animal/plant life that really hungers for something to get just a bit too close to its opening.  It seems to wait for you to maybe, hopefully, reach inside.  But do not do it!  It wants to have you think that it is a delicate little flower like creature, but I assure you that it is not. 

Why else do you think I have it chained to a vintage tea cup?  These little pods are ever so clever and because of this they have to be restrained or goodness knows what might occur!  It may not passively wait for good things to arrive in it's presence, it may actively go out on the prowl looking for the unwary.

These captive bulb vases are a whimsy of mine that are a lot of fun to create.  I will start out with a special cup.  It has to be an orphan cup forever separated from its saucer and sometimes even with a tiny flaw that would keep any savvy collector from having much interest. So to sum it up, each cup is chosen for it's loneliness, but also for specific qualities of aesthetic beauty that for the initiated will be easy to discern. 

After I find a cup I will then place it in my work area and observe it for awhile, maybe a month or so or in some cases years before I see the exact form that will be made for this single cup.  I have to say that as spontaneous as my works may seem to be many of them are intricately thought out for in some cases many years before I sit down to sculpt the actual ceramic art pottery its self.
 

Most of these captive bulb and pod vases feature a message or art work that is hidden by the restraining cup.  These sort of secret messages are there, hidden by the cup enclosure, just for the eyes of very special people.  There may be a great truth, an obscure message, a private joke, or maybe even just a bit of silliness. I will tell you though that as I make them they are evolving, making each one more and more special to my sense of creative value.

Who knows where these little personal treasures may lead?  The only thing that I can factually say is that there will be many more and that each one will be ultimately an original work of my labor intensive love obsession with art pottery.