Potato Landscape Pitcher

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Object Name: 
Sculpture
Title: 
Potato Landscape Pitcher
Accession Number: 
85.4.8
Dimensions: 
Overall H: 7 cm, W: 8.5 cm, L: 10.7 cm
Location: 
Not on Display
Date: 
1979
Web Description: 
The “Fabricated Weird” series from the early 1980s signaled a new direction for Marquis. These pieces, which Marquis calls “visual notes,” were quickly assembled from the things that surrounded him in his studio, such as a broken piece of glass, a chunk of obsidian, and pieces of murrine cane. The solid white murrine “spout” on this “pitcher” is actually a word cane that reads, “Chuck the duck / says life is / mostly hard work.” This was one of Marquis’s first pieces to incorporate an object from his collections: a souvenir painted bottle filled with sand.
Series: 
Fabricated Weird
Provenance: 
Marquis, Richard (American, b. 1945), Source
1985-03-11
Color: 
Inscription: 
Chuck the duck / says life is / mostly hard work.
inscription
on the solid white mirrine spout
Marquis #F.S.W. 19
signature
Primary Description: 
Blown multicolored glass, filigrana cane, murrine cane, air twist, ground, cut, bonded, addition found object. Irregular sculpture in the form of a stylized non-functional pitcher; section of multi- colored twist cased in colorless with elongated pointed air inclusion has rounded top, cut or ground flat base, inscribed "Marquis #F.S.W. 19" on lower edge, and two ground spots on opposing sides; adhered to one polished spot is a "spout" consisting of a length of opaque white "Lord's prayer" millefiori with minute black inscription: "Chuck the duck/says life is/mostly hard work"; adhered to opposite side is an ovoid loop of a length of multi-colored millefiori cased in colorless cane; twist is adhered to a "potato" section of blown opaque light yellow cased in light brown with scattered indented "eyes", six evenly spaced ground areas to which are adhered radiating short lengths of square multi-colored millefiori cane with flat bases and four-sided end points, each cane is of different colors and configuration; "potato" is cut or ground flat where it joins the color twist on top and on the bottom where it is adhered to a "found" commercially produced paperweight of unknown origin with a flattened top, weight is hollow colorless glass filled with a sandpainting depicting a desert mountain landscape, open bottom is filled with a white "plaster".
Venue(s)
Corning Museum of Glass 2013-02-16 through 2014-02-02
This exhibition is part of the Corning Museum’s ongoing Masters of Studio Glass series developed to provide a platform for in-depth surveys of artists represented in the Museum’s permanent collection.
Title Unknown (Heller Gallery)
Venue(s)
Heller Gallery 1980-09-19 through 1950-10-04
 
Glass Art Society Exhibition
Venue(s)
Huntington Galleries 1980 through 1980