Guido Gambone, 31cm

Buying something you want, but do not need, is the essence of collecting. It is, at its core, pure emotion. I saw this Gambone in a glass display cabinet at an antiques show over a decade ago, shortly after I started collecting ceramics. I had never seen one in person; the delicacy of the glaze and faded yellows really caught my eye. The price was high, certainly higher than I had paid for any other vase to that point, and I wondered whether buying it would be smart financially. Emotion won out over rationality, however, and I brought it home. The good news today: It did turn out to be a good financial decision. The bad news? I don’t like admitting it, but it just doesn’t speak to me today… so much so that I forgot about it and waited until now, five years after I started this site, to write about it. Ouch. How I feel about it now doesn’t change the objective nature of it, though. Gambones have an utterly unique feel about them I have never seen duplicated, e.g. the choice to cut the angle of the neck at the very bottom of the cone where it joins the body gives this piece a hand-made quality lacking in other mass-produced Italian works at the time. It is, by any measure, very nice — but just not for me anymore. Ah, the emotional tempest of the breakup ahead! Perhaps the next time I will let my head, as opposed to my heart, lead the way.