Fallen Crown Ng Eng Teng Nationality: Singaporean. Year: 1991. Medium: Stoneware, glaze, & copper wire. Size: 56 x 21 x 23cm.

Fallen Crown, 1991 (Fig. 6) represents the fall of the mighty. The artist quips, " I suppose nobody stays up there forever, one day he has to step down. So, symbolically, when you are up there, you wear a crown, and when you are no more there, it is like a falling crown!" This is one of the artist's prized pieces because it is the result of a complex ceramic procedure which would be difficult to reproduce successfully. First, the crown with the crystal blue glaze was fired to 1,200 degrees. Then around this form was wrapped a white clay shape with a metal ring and wire embedded in it. When dry, the clay is burnished and the whole biscuited at 1,000 degrees. Finally it was pit-fired to about 1,000 - 1,100 degrees to obtain the flashes of pink or red and the smoky black. The remarkable beauty of its colours and the smoothness of its finish add to the elegance and density of this piece.

-- Bodies Transformed, ch. 2

References

Constance Sheares. Bodies Transformed: Ng Eng Teng in the Nineties. Singapore: NUS Museums/ National University of Singapore, 1999.

This document is part of a joint project of the NUS Museums and the University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore. This image and accompanying text appears here with the kind permission of the NUS Museums.

Last updated: 11 January 2001