I hugged a wolf

Deep roots and tangled foliage. A rustle in the bushes nearby. Shadows run in the silence, like elusive ghosts among the birch trees. Growling, biting, bleeding like heartless hunters. The wolf sighs, and lonely sings his sad wolf song. I hugged a wolf: but was I dreaming?

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Wild red clay and kaolin slip from Bisalta

Turned at the wheel

Fired in oxidation at 1250°C

⌀ 23 cm, h 23 cm

The clay for this vase was foraged from a deposit of quartzitic clay on Mt Bisalta. The bright kaolin slip comes from just a few hundred metres below, from a small vein of weathered Bisaltite, a type of green rhyolite typical of the mountain.

The vessel was thrown at the wheel and later decorated with the sgraffito technique.

Mt Bisalta is a mountain in the south of Piedmont. It’s a special place for its recognizable two-tops shape visible from all around the region, a symbol of the Italian Resistenza and the partisans' liberation fight from the fascist regime.