BAKED CLAY

This is a fun clay whistle, a fun Italian whistle to be more specific, crafted from the fantastical imagination of Riccardo Biavati at his Bottega de Stella in Ferrara, Italy but it is more than its desription, it is imagination and life manifest in baked earth. This whimsical manifestation in clay has like many pots been dragged along through various States and moves mostly in the Northeast with the one deviation into Virginia and like many of the pots we have this one also has a back story be it rather simple and mundane. This Biavati whistle, made and signed by the artist was a gift from a pair of dealers at a short lived gallery of curiosities in Akron, Ohio that we had actually met in NYC several years prior. The whistle along with a large format catalogue were samples given by the artist at a show in NYC to the dealers so when we saw the piece on a shelf we inquired about it, received what they knew of the artist and then gave it to us as a parting gift. I guess I didn't mention this was the very last object of any material that we collected while living in Cleveland as the following Monday with all of our belongings in a big U-Haul truck we were off to New Hampshire to start another chapter of our lives. 

Since everything was already packed, this piece was wrapped in a towel and placed in a big blue tuffy and as luck would have it, it made the journey safe and sound and was also the very first piece unpacked in our new house, a bow house in Windham, NH. The body of the whistle appears thrown, having visible throwing rings around the form with the "antlers", ears, eyes, nose, legs and plinth all attached to the form which has an area of decoration to help define the face. The clay is a buff, just off white material and the piece was carefully glazed accentuating each feature to just the right purpose and helping to animate Bavati's sense of whimsy, imagination, dreams and tales told during his youth into three dimensional forms. Referring to much of his work as his own personal archeology, " Biavati’s works positively exude emotions and dreams. It’s part of their charm and you can’t help to feel light hearted and … smile."* (*From RICCARDO BIAVATI; Poems, Dreams, Secrets and Tales)