Inner surfaces

The Xianrendong pots from 18-20 thousand years ago are the earliest known ceramic vessels, probably made for utilitarian purposes of storing and cooking food. A vessel is more than a container though; unlike other sculpted objects, it has an interior surface as well as an exterior.

Objects crafted to have both inner and outer surfaces may serve various functions denied to solid constructions:

• Protection, in clothing, shelters, footwear
• Resonance, in musical instruments
• Transportation, in watercraft
• Containment, in baskets
• Cooking, in pots
• Habitation, inside dwellings
• Fortification, within forts
• Ritual, in temples, of ceremonial vessels
• Representation, of inner life
• Concealment, of inscriptions, valuables
• Standardisation, of jars for trade
• Decoration, of rooms, ceramic bowls and glass vessels
• Piping, of water and sewage
• Instrumentation, of telescopes, microscopes

This listing, roughly by historical first appearance, reveals an evolution through archaeological time, from functions that are served in the object to purposes of its interior space. The inner surface thereby graduates from supporting and provisioning to regulating and cultural roles.

We live in and between all kinds of opposites: up-down, left-right, before-after, … set by physics, or right-wrong, good-bad, heaven-hell, … set by culture. Physics can dictate that a clay pot has opposing surfaces; it takes culture to recognise that a solid has an opposite in a hollow, and to fill its void with entrails of the deceased for passage into the next world.

C.P. Doncaster, Timeline of the Human Condition