◄ Overview
Jane Crisp
Cherry Forager, 2021
Steam-bent cherry, copper nails and roves finished with natural hard wax oil
15 x 18 x 14.25 inches
A trug, traditionally, is a shallow basket made from wooden strips, intended for light duty — marketing or gardening, perhaps. While this narrow description does fit Jane Crisp’s (b. 1980, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK) reinvention of the form, it leaves a lot unsaid. To the conventional repertoire, she has added skills drawn from her own experience as a furniture maker who has also been inspired by boat-building practices and materials: steam-bending, copper nails, and an overlapping “clinker” construction. These techniques allow her to create shapes that are indeed somewhat redolent of a ship’s hull, or perhaps a bird’s wing, folding in upon itself. Crisp, who has also lived on a narrow boat, cites riverbank reeds as an inspiration for her forms. But the real value in these elegant objects is not so much in their references, the technical aspects of their construction, or even the personal experiences that they reflect. No: it is the way they sit within space and time, poised and confident. In their vertiginous spiraling lines, we see the trajectories of past and present intersecting.
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Cherry Forager, 2021
Steam-bent cherry, copper nails and roves finished with natural hard wax oil
15 x 18 x 14.25 inches
A trug, traditionally, is a shallow basket made from wooden strips, intended for light duty — marketing or gardening, perhaps. While this narrow description does fit Jane Crisp’s (b. 1980, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK) reinvention of the form, it leaves a lot unsaid. To the conventional repertoire, she has added skills drawn from her own experience as a furniture maker who has also been inspired by boat-building practices and materials: steam-bending, copper nails, and an overlapping “clinker” construction. These techniques allow her to create shapes that are indeed somewhat redolent of a ship’s hull, or perhaps a bird’s wing, folding in upon itself. Crisp, who has also lived on a narrow boat, cites riverbank reeds as an inspiration for her forms. But the real value in these elegant objects is not so much in their references, the technical aspects of their construction, or even the personal experiences that they reflect. No: it is the way they sit within space and time, poised and confident. In their vertiginous spiraling lines, we see the trajectories of past and present intersecting.
