We tend to regard burning things as consuming or perhaps spoiling what is burnt. But Nicholas Kerl's Tortoise challenges this notion to create what he describes as a 'mood lighting object'. You might also call it a lamp shade, but that seems a bit modest for such a beautiful thing.
The Tortoise let us call it, is made of clay, although it looks like wood. The clay has been burnt during the firing process, but then using the Japanese technique of Raku a dark metallic glaze gives the piece an entirely different quality. The result is an aesthetic ambiguity that invites the viewer to touch it and to understand it.
