Bullish Brown

Earthen browns splashed with creams, in a salt-fired stoneware container, looks like it would be at home in a barn of a brown bull.  Feeling bullish myself from time to time, I think I would enjoy a brown bowl in my own abode.

Perhaps I should add this brown moss dish garden on the table top of my shade contained gazebo, covered in vines. The colors speak to me.  The effects of salt in the firing process intrigues me.  Filled with a variety of mosses — Bryoandersonia illecebra, Campylopus introflexus, dicranum scoparium, Leucobryum glaucum, and Atrichum undulatum — messes with my mind with sensory delights.  One must be careful with a seemingly brown and green dish, when indeed, the depth of the bowl and the bowl’s contents are deep in mystery.

The ebony spleenwort, planted off-center, adds height and balance to the mosses. David Spain designed this dish by, “Dividing the planting scheme with pleurocarps on the left and acrocarps on the right.  I thought it would be ineresting to see both types of mosses, side by side.”

This design tactic created an interesting dish for comparing moss types.  David says, “I further added Parmellia lichen to pick up the salt glaze texture and light green tones.”

It is indeed interesting to see the pleurocarps and acrocarps side by side, in this deep brown dish.