Living Line: Selected Indian Drawings @ Met Museum

Subhash Kapoor collection recently gifted to the Met. A phenomenal collection of gorgeous drawings. Lots of tigers. Thanks, Subhash !

MoMA design collection

Just a few things that caught my eye recently..... Willys-Overland Jeep, 1953; Bauhaus-designed vessel from 1923 by Theodor Bogler; Alcoa can designed by Daniel Cudzik ( extra points if you remember the prevailing can design that this replaced ! ).

turtle

Besides the fact that it is darling, a pretty neat concept: a two-piece, shallow vessel, by virtue of the fact that the shell can be removed. Saw this recently at the Met.

Large-Scale Ceramic Sculpture

These two guys flank an entrance in the Asian Galleries at the Met Museum.

Some New Things

Lots of mugs

Samanid Epigraphic Pottery

Yes, I just learned the name for this style of ware from Wikipedia. This piece comes from Iran or thereabouts and dates from the 10th century. The inscription says "planning before work protects you from regret", and the script is so beautiful I want to eat it, or at least eat something off of the platter that it decorates. Apparently, the most typical inscriptions found on this kind of dish are proverbs, or otherwise something having to do with advocating or describing a correct approach to the consumption or sharing of food. What I like in this case, is that while it fulfills the proscriptive, "correct way to live" message to the viewer, it also self-reflexively calls attention to the mastery of its maker, by virtue of the perfection of the spacing of the characters around the perimeter of the dish, which could only have come about because the hand that wrote it was so adept. A nice marriage of message and medium, I'd say.