In Living Black & White

Robert Nichols Gallery presented cups & buckets made in Sèvres & Santa Fe. The bone china of the National Manufactory of Sèvres yielded cups of the brightest white. The marble reliefs of the Parthenon, showing figures processing toward the temple, were influential. The marble-like smoothness of the polished bone china contrasts with the very high gloss glaze, as reflective as a babbling brook. In Santa Fe, Molanphy adopted local low-fire micaceous clay with post-fire smoke blackening & a polished dark stoneware to make buckets that would contrast the smaller white cups. Inspired by 18th c. Sèvres buckets, the black buckets appear to be compressed, leaving little storage space & pushing the volumes into the extremities of each bucket.

2008, Robert Nichols Gallery, Santa Fe, NM