Prtlnd Vase, 2012

Made by Additive Layer Manufacturing from a high quality nylon material with soft mineral coating. The artist Michael Eden uses only visual information available from a search engine to re-interpret the design of a famous work of art.

In this case the sculpture is based on the ancient Roman ‘Portland Vase’ made between 5AD and 25AD which is held in the collection of the British Museum, London.  The artist is shown with his ‘Prtlnd Vase’ next to the original.

Height 30cm (11 3/4")
Diameter 24cm (9 1/2")

ME84

Leicester Arts and Museums Service, UK, 2013

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More about Prtlnd Vase, 2012

'The Internet is a place where we spend increasing amounts of time. We go there to talk to our friends, to play, to learn and to explore. It’s a place where space and time become blurred and the actual, physical world mixes with the virtual. Google allows us to explore the world as time-travellers to the recent past, floating through streets on the other side of the world. Google also allows us to walk through galleries and museums, and zoom in on the brush strokes of our favourite paintings. Why queue for the Uffizi when you can stroll through the empty galleries from the comfort of your armchair? It is an extraordinary technical achievement, a very useful tool, but it’s not the real thing, you can’t smell the oil paint and you can’t quite walk all the way round the sculptures. The Prtlnd Vase has been created to explore these issues. It was chosen because the original Portland Vase, an exquisite Roman glass vase has fascinated generations and been the subject of numerous attempts to reproduce it. The most recognisable copies are by Josiah Wedgwood, displayed in 1790, after 4 years of laborious trials. The Duke of Portland lent him the original, so that Wedgwood was able to study the details and produce an accurate ceramic copy. My interpretation has been created from information and imagery freely available on the Internet. It is deliberately facetted and some of the original decoration is missing because I couldn’t ‘see’ it in enough detail. So, The Prtlnd Vase represents the next chapter of the continuing story of the Portland vase, but seen through the filter of the Internet. It has been created to draw in the viewer and to question the relationship between the actual and the virtual.' - Michael Eden 20.10.12

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