Soul in a bowl

This was made by Per Lütken at the Danish glassworks Holmegaard in the 70s. The technique, so I read, is you soak a wooden stick in water overnight, take a blob of molten glass from the furnace, and bring the two together, wearing gloves. Water turning to steam gives a thousand-fold increase in volume. When the cataclysm has died down you open your eyes and see what you’ve got. Often a subtle free-form vase, in this case a perfectly round small bowl. A lucky find on ebay for a fiver.

It is the essence of the meditative / mindful / unified / centred state. Whole, spontaneous, natural, still, translucent, receptive, reflective, restrained, inscrutable, balanced, self-contained, mysterious, a moment suspended, the colour of sky after rain.

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