Coil-built in his Sheffield studio from a blend of hand-foraged British clays and recycled stoneware, George Baggaley’s sculptural Holy Vessel harks to ancient relics, broken pottery and the historical ubiquity of personifying objects.

Crafted with the words of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ in the background, the Holy Vessel is a decaying structure of grandeur, fallen fate to the inevitable executioner of time itself. Acting as a sort of memento mori, it bears its own degeneration from genesis; broken before it can be broken, dead before it can die. 

From an ongoing exploration of idolatrous vessels and the universal practice of representing spiritual and deistic likenesses in pottery, the Holy Vessel bears the usual curves, bumps and ears synonymous with George’s work, hinting to anatomical structures of the human form. 

The Holy Vessel is a sculptural piece made exclusively for Fels.