Pop-Up Shop | Peter Pincus Made an Exciting Series Just for CFile

In the middle of the day, my eyes become strained. Sometimes they simply stop focusing, and all the color and light in front of me washes together into pixel soup. Then comes the headache. Those of you sitting at your computers every day have probably experienced a similar handicapping sensation. It’s called Computer Vision Syndrome. And for a huge number of us, it’s part of daily life.

Preventing Computer Vision Syndrome is simple! Get yourself a Peter Pincus cup! Glancing at Pincus’s variegated patterns and saturated color combos will keep your eyes in working order throughout the week. Luckily for you we are selling Pincus’s cups this week in our shop! Act quickly! Our Pop-Ups usually sell out fast.

Our editor Garth Clark challenged Pincus to make a stemmed vessel not unlike some of the large sculptural vessels he had been making, only more petite, more everyday. He accepted the challenge with a reservation: he would not use glue to attach the foot to the cup like he did with the sculptural vessels. “Using glue on a functional cup is sacrilegious!” he wrote. “Some clay rules I don’t dare test.” Instead, he fired each cup and foot separately to cone 6, and then balanced the cup on the foot and fused the two together with low fire clear glaze (cone 05).

Pincus surfaced with exactly what Garth asked for: a stemmed cup with exceptional geometric color work on the outside, and a shiny square pedestal. It’s called The Pedestal Cup.

Pincus’s second form is The Pillar Cup, which feels architectural with alternating columns and colors. Here’s what he had to say about them:

“Pillar cups are thrown on the wheel as three basic forms; a straight cylinder, a convex curve, and a concave curve. These three forms have been cut into 72 pieces and reassembled using a 14-part shell mold. Colored porcelain is dabbed on the surface of each piece in the mold. The mold is reassembled and cast in multiple colored porcelain layers.

“Five are gradient studies. In each, one value is presented on every concave panel, a gradient of black, white and grey is presented on the convex panels, and the form is cast in a color to contrast the original concave value. This is an iteration of a cup series from 2012. Additionally, there are two cups with alternating panels of all color and all white, and a series of four cups that use glaze to pull cobalt from the blue slip down onto the white slip below.”

CFile Pop-Up Shop Series is thrilled to be selling a functional cup that can also pass for a clinical solution to Computer Vision Syndrome! I am only (sort of) joking. Pincus’s cups are wild cards. They are summery and sunny, optimistic in color, but also smart and mathematical in form— something beside your ergonomic keyboard rest to keep you alert in the middle of the work week. Fearless with his palette, some of Peter’s cups are like Crayola crayons, saturated and classic in their color. Other color pairings take me back to a certain popsicle that I bought from an ice cream truck in my youth. Feast your eyes!

You could say we’re pleased with the results. Well actually, we are in love these cups. The Peter Pincus Pop-Up Shop launches today, right here.

Peter joined the School for American Crafts at RIT as Visiting Assistant Professor in Ceramics in Fall 2014. Peter received his BFA (2005) and MFA (2011) in ceramics from Alfred University, and in between was a resident artist at the Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino, California. His work has been exhibited in venues such as the Salon Art + Design, SOFA Chicago, Collective Design, Lewis Wexler Gallery, Duane Reed Gallery, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Independent Art Projects at Mass MOCA, Greenwich House Pottery and National Council on Education for the Ceramic Art. Peter’s work can be found in numerous private and public collections. Peter currently lives in Penfield, NY and is an Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Rochester Institute of Technology.