Horsehair Vase

By Elizabeth B. Tucker

Piece description from the artist

A friend of mine who is a potter created this beautiful vase. The black lines are horse hair that is burned into the pottery while in the kiln. Horse hair raku is a method of decorating pottery through the application of horsehair and other dry carbonaceous material to the heated ware. The burning carbonaceous material creates smoke patterns and carbon trails on the surface of the heated ware that remain as decoration after the ware cools.

Artists around the world are suffering from the uncertainty caused by the continued spread of coronavirus. In a bid to help them carry on as the world shuts down, one artist has launched a simple pledge to encourage them to help each other.

Matthew Burrows started the Artist Support Pledge initiative to alleviate some of the stress the pandemic has caused, as many artists have now found themselves without work. Exhibitions and sales have been shut down, and teaching and technical support has become difficult to access. The project, which he launched on his Instagram page, “was really a response to the current situation, a creative solution to how I might help myself but also friends and colleagues through this period, by utilizing the generosity of the arts community—which is abundant,” Burrows tells Artnet News.

The idea is simple: Artists who commit to the pledge will post images of a work that’s for sale, for no more than £200 ($230), and each time their sales reach £1,000 ($1,155) they promise to buy another artist’s work for £200.

“I realized the work needed to be cheap enough to make selling it an act of generosity, but also I needed to make that infectious,” Burrows says, “generosity creates generosity.”