This vase is a delicate and sophisticated example of post-war British pottery. Just twenty-nine ceramics by Peter Lanyon have been identified and attributed to the artist, and this work of glazed earthenware is a rare and jewel-like example in his oeuvre. Its delicate layers of green and black glaze evoke an atmospheric landscape, closely related to those which appear in the artist’s paintings of Cornwall. The muted, earthy tones fired onto the surface of the pot suggest the shifting weather of a sea coast, and the sweeps of transparent black glaze are reminiscent of lowering rain clouds passing overhead. Lanyon himself suggested that a close relationship existed between his drawings and his ceramics, referring to them in one letter as ‘maquettes’ for his two-dimensional works.

The pot displays vigorous sculptural qualities. It was constructed from distinct segments of clay, as is characteristic of the ‘slab-build’ technique. There is a clear relationship between the cylindrical drum below and the improvisatory fold which has been shaped into a mouth. Lanyon placed an emphasis on asymmetry in these works from the early nineteen-fifties, and he experimented with unstructured forms and organic imagery in both his paintings and ceramics alike. The mouth of the vase is particularly successful in this regard, with its wave-like silhouette.

Peter Lanyon lived and worked in Cornwall for much of his life. Despite using the Leach Pottery in St Ives, however, which is famed for its thrown pottery, Lanyon developed his own independent style of pot-making with an emphasis on the individualised, often idiosyncratic characteristics of a hand-shaped vessels. His distinctive style was based on a rejection of the pottery wheel. This particular work is a rare example of a well-documented piece in Lanyon’s ceramic output, with a label on its underside clearly relating it to the 1952 exhibition, Ceramics in the Home.