TERAPH CEREMONIAL BOWL
Cedar, MDF
Lacquer (waist high)
This work sits within a Ceremonial Bowl category in Lueckenhausens work. This category works within the narrative of containing, of being an agent for presentation and making a votive offering. Larger manifestations of this category have found their way into similar installations, both domestic and commercial as the formal welcoming icon on an office reception area or in the entrance hallway of a home. These works can be placed anywhere and at their most prosaic they could contain fruit, eggs or some collection of decorative objects. At their most poetic they manifest as domestic reliquaries.
The narrative is that of the (albeit) domestic object with long-term provenance rather than of the ephemeral, as with most contemporary domestic objects with a use by date.
Teraph Ceremonial Bowl also includes Lueckenhausens theme of the household god inserting itself into the domestic scene as a sort of guardian presence. This symbiotic duality sits behind a theme of reconciliation of opposites including:
geometric against curvilinear, and often zoomorphic, form,
natural timber colours and textures against highly finished, painted or laminated surfaces,
architectonic stillness against the suggestion of movement, as in recent arrival or imminent flight.
The Teraph(im) works present a combination of the creature crafted in highly finished natural timber and the geometric or architectonic manufactured form in painted, metal coated, veneered or ebonised MDF or timber, or in some cases , timber in contrasting colours.