Tear Catchers

Tear catchers, Swan-neck bottles or 'ashkdān' in Persian, 'container for tears' are the best-known objects of an Iranian glass tradition that began under Shah Abbas I in Shiraz and Isfahan 3000 years ago. Folklore holds that the long neck was made to collect the tears of wives separated from their husbands; in Victorian Europe the same form gathered the tears of mourners, and when the tears had evaporated the period of grief was declared over. My tear catchers translate those vessels into clay: swan-necked, banded and illuminated with PVD, each neck opening into a shallow catch for tears. The vessel appears here less as a container than as a Dr Seuss-like instrument for transforming and transmuting emotions. Another form of alchemy: wine into water, metal into gold, sorrow into joy.