Jordan McDonald Platter • Permanent Collection

A generous, parchment-colored round platter with a shallow bowl and turned-down lip decorated with an emerald-toned botanical motif. Made from wheel-thrown stoneware clay, the form was inspired by the shape of a Picasso platter from a touring show of the late artist’s ceramics. Its shape stood out from the others—it appeared soft and pillowy, despite the material. McDonald observed the underside and saw that the rim was turned down: an inverted lip.

“In ceramics,” McDonald says, “and especially at the potter's wheel, you try to add 'lift' to the form so the clay fights gravity and appears more elegant. These plates did the opposite: the top of the plate folded over towards the underside of the plate. This down-turned rim wasn't Picasso's invention, but this shape lent itself to his use of the plates as a type of canvas. The glaze and decoration of my platter are meant to convey my love of economy in production pottery: the tapping of a brush along the rim alludes to time, rhythm, foliage, and flowers.” McDonald is interested in the things we use and touch each day, an approach informed by his mentor in college who described the practice as “Making necessity a virtue…or the virtue of necessity.”