Blue White Delft Style Georgian Cthulhu Reliquary Trinket Box by Michael W. Moses Ocean Springs, MS

"The Georgian Illustrated Box"

This piece is named "The Georgian Illustrated Box" and I used a commercially made blank bisqueware ceramic box and painted it in a blue and white style that is reminiscent of the tastes for the 18th and 19th century blue and white ceramics. There was a passion for all things mourning, and the romanticized memorial in nature, during the Georgian era, 1714 to 1830. 

I have mixed these design elements with those of the Asian influences on European and American ceramic-wares and then added a few more elements that do not generally belong to this piece if it were original. I then gave it all a brisk shake, mixed it a few times and ended up with the designs mentioned to achieve an eclectic effect.  This spin has made it totally my own original expression of antique blue and white ceramic art work. It is an "homage" to this neo classic style so to speak.

Circa 1820's 30's English Blue and White Transfer Ware

I have tried to create a box that is a stand-alone work of art that appears to be nothing more than a beautiful hand painted piece that might sit in some delicate grandmother's finely appointed front parlor. This innocuous trinket box might sit for a very long time on a dainty étagère, maybe for years without anyone even touching it. You just do not touch things in the formal parlor.

  A Georgian Era Mourning Image

The first thing that you will notice is that the lid has an idealized almost pastoral scene, That has a number of almost Chinese or Japanese elements, but then you will see the stately willow and the funereal urn and then the peculiarly formed pseudo-obelisk discreetly on the side. This vignette is a thinly disguised memento mori similar in mode to nothing less than Georgian era mourning Jewelry

The outside of box is an archaic style wall of individual stones of an unknown age and with a number of cryptic images that can only add to the final tale that this piece has to tell.

But with closer inspection, you might start to observe that many of the stylistic details are not standard to what you would expect to see on a piece such as this. If you look closely, you will see a number of interesting things on the painted into the details on the box. Then, once you lift the lid off, you will see inside a mysterious garden of not quite wholesome looking flowers. These plants surround an oddly laid out geometric detail that contains what appears to be an ancient long forgotten language.

Then, when you turn the lid over, you will see on the inside what makes this piece so different for your everyday drawing room nick-knack that sets in other brightly lit everyday homes. An image of Cthulhu longingly, and eternally hungering for human life force to reinvigorate his very being, staring at you with his ice cold yellow (at least in our spectrum of light) eyes!  This delicately detailed image is almost hidden inside the lid.  Who looks at the inside of the lid of a box?  Not most I would think.

This lavishly painted container is a perfect reliquary for whatever curious artifact that you may have that needs a truly special pyx to house it appropriately.

For a little more oomph, turn the box over and you will see that a happy little winged spider creature with the wings closed tight is painted on the bottom, as a cartouche.

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.