William Daley was born in New York in 1925 and served in World War II during which he was taken as a prisoner. After the war, he studied at Massachusetts College of Art and then went on to spend the majority of his career teaching at Philadelphia College of Art. He described himself, saying, “I am a teacher who makes pots and things rather than a craftsman or artist who teaches.” Despite his influential tenure as a professor, he truly was a master of ceramics in his own right. His works are often large in scale and left unglazed, as seen in the present lot. Daley began his process by drawing sketches of his forms, which he then constructed with large slabs of clay. His work is often described as architectonic and Triaxial Procession is a quintessential expression of this stylistic approach. Daley’s work belongs to collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.