Akhenaten Reliquary Urn. 1998. 

My Dad was in the Royal Signals during the Second World War and was stationed in the Middle East, in particular Egypt. As I was growing up he told my brother and I stories of what he was doing there. Consequently I became interested in the history and in the buildings of that area.

​In history and culture I just find certain people interesting, so it is with this Pharaoh, and I decided to make, in the third year of the BA (Hons) Ceramics Degree course, an urn from my thoughts about him. This was the third urn that I made. He successfully cast away the many Egyptian gods to worship just one god as represented by the sun-disk. Intriguingly some believe that he was a hermaphrodite and I have picked up on this by using an erect phallus and a pair of breasts to form the lid of the urn.

​I also like various architectural styles and in general other visual things to, mixing them up in my art work in a very playful Post Modern way. As I had been on an extended holiday in Australia I decided to include some Australian colonial architecture into the urn, notably the corrugations seen on the two sides, derived from corrugated tin roofs seen out there. Also from Australia the shape of those breasts are based on Tasmanian tiger ears. I’ve also incorporated into the urn Art Deco.

​The phallus lid can be lifted off to reveal another lid. When that lid is lifted, a chamber is revealed containing yet another lid and when that lid is lifted, a small chamber is revealed which could contain relics of the Pharaoh. 

​The urn points skywards, rather like an Art Deco skyscraper or rocket, ready to take the remains of the Pharaoh to heaven. It sits upon a launch pad of stylised elephant feet that links the urn to the island of Elephantine in Lower Egypt. For the finish I have used an enamel gold paint to give a rather dull aged weathered effect and to contrast with the shiny black slip glaze, the black representing mortality.