Thirteen Beware, It’s The Devil Himself

This vase was made at Salemi Ceramics in Sicily using stoneware clay coated with blue underglaze and decorated through the sgraffito technique where the surface is carved to reveal pale clay beneath the colour. The imagery draws on the Lancashire version of the traditional rhyme “One for Sorrow” which links magpies with fortune telling and superstition. Versions of the poem were recorded in northern England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when people often read the number of birds as an omen of luck, grief or celebration. The symmetrical design highlights a playful devil and features the final line of the rhyme “thirteen beware, it’s the Devil himself.” Also featuring thirteen magpies in total, the uneasy humour of moral tales and the persuasive language of historic mottoware pottery traditions are being reimagined through this invitation for discovery.