Technically, with a ‘flipper’ heal that runs horizontal (rather than vertical), this streamlined beauty from Victor Yashtylov would fall into the whale family of shapes. But there is something coolly wicked and primordial in the execution that suggests something that is at least as predatory as it is aquatic. Well, you tell me. When you first glanced at this presentation, did you hear the theme song from ‘Flipper’, or the ostinato of bass notes from the opening of the ‘Jaws’ theme? John Williams, the composer of the latter, stated that his aim was to invoke a ‘sense of the instinctual, relentless, and unstoppable’, and I believe that Victor succeeded in capturing the same anima within the briar.

The rim features a good crosscut, and the fore of the bowl sports some fine ‘sharks eye’. The critical election that moves the composition from the benign to slightly malevolent, lies in the execution of that fascinatingly sinister tail. While this ‘jaws, writ small’ can sit, it takes a careful placement to get it to do so (and to my mind, if you can’t just plunk it, it’s not really a sitter). If it did sit with ease, I would love to own it, what better object to place on my desk to face the portrait of my ex mother-in-law?!

Bear Graves