‘CFI Birds Nest Bowls’ by Benedikt Hipp

CFI Birds Nest Bowls 
Edition of 14
7x7x5cm
Fly ash glazed ceramic
2022

The second edition of Benedikt Hipp’s ‘ceramic fencepost imprints’ for Assembly Line sees a coterie of perfectly formed mini-vessels forged from the round knob of an antique iron post in his native Bavaria. A variety of clays, infused with gaseous powders, are formed over the spherical fencepost and fired over a three-day period in Hipp’s home-built kiln. The decorative fate of each piece is then determined by the fiery fluctuations and unpredictable vagaries of the furnace. Those not lost to the pottery Gods (some numbers are missing from the sequence…) carry the vestige of primordial process on the surface, the appearance of age-old epochs hewn in mere days. The aura of ages is countered, however, by the modern taxonomy of a superficial numbering system. Pressed into the moist clay by an embossed hammer-like tool recovered from an abandoned German workshop the numbers are imprinted like code (or perhaps the fictional date of their making?) in a genuine Art Nouveau-style Bavarian script.

Each birds nest bowl in the series is made via a repeat process and yet is entirely irreplicable.