Feet of Clay ... Separated by Millenniums

Ceramic footed 'Tongue Chair' ... 1971

    Recently I was sorting through a stack of folders containing papers and letters that had accumulated over the years, and came across a Metropolitan Museum of Art gift flyer that my mother had sent to me in 1976. She had noticed a similarity between one of the items pictured in the mailing and a clay piece I had done 5 years previously. The piece in the catalogue was a reproduction of a ceramic Egyptian Predynastic 'footed' bowl from the Metropolitan Museum's collection.
     I had never seen the Museum's bowl, but the similarities to my own piece were obvious... the position of the feet beneath the bowl, the size relationship of the feet to the bowl, and the angle of the bowl. Certainly there are differences... in color and size ( the 'Tongue Chair' is 10" tall and the Egytpian bowl is just under 4" tall), and my piece has the added elements of hands and the nose and tongue, but the parallels between them make me wonder if I might have been an artisan for a pharaoh in a previous life long ago - although, truthfully, I'm not not sold on the concept of reincarnation, and 1971 sure seems like a lifetime ago.

MMA gift catalogue from 1976

Egyptian footed bowl ..... circa 4000-3600 B.C.

Reproduction Egyptian footed bowl