When potter Jane Hamlyn built a new kiln at her studio in the East Midlands region of England, her artistic practice changed. Though she continued to create works with the salt glazes for which she is best known, her forms changed from being largely functional in nature to more sculptural. She begins by throwing oval cylinders on the wheel which she then cuts at a diagonal and attaches to a base. This process allows her to create tilted cylindrical forms that are then glazed and arranged in groupings which Hamlyn calls Empty Vessels.

This process of selection and arrangement was new to Hamlyn. She noted how the making process was no longer simply about the production of a vessel, for example, but now extended to decisions made after the firing. The present arrangement of vessels exhibits not only the potter’s aesthetic sensibility through her grouping but also the extraordinary yet subtle variations that occur from the salt-glazing process.