Two ceramic vessels photographed together — the collection's only three-dimensional works, and evidence that Sidney T. Cothran Jr.'s artistic practice extended into clay and glaze. The left vessel is a bowl with an irregular organic rim — not perfectly circular but with gentle undulations at the edge — decorated with horizontal bands of deep teal-green glaze running around the exterior. The right vessel is a shorter, thicker cup or yunomi-style form with a similarly irregular rim, decorated with flowing blue-green glaze marks that include what appears to be a small abstract figure or face on the exterior — the drawn mark appearing even in the ceramic work.
The irregular rims of both vessels — hand-shaped rather than wheel-thrown to perfect symmetry — indicate a hand-building or deliberate off-round throwing approach, the maker choosing organic form over perfect geometry. The teal glaze connecting both vessels suggests they were made at the same time or in the same series, and the flowing glaze marks on the smaller vessel suggest that the same instinct for mark-making that animates the drawings appears in the ceramic work too: the glaze as drawn line, the vessel as a surface for marks.
The appearance of ceramic work at the collection's end — after hundreds of drawings, watercolors, pastels, oil paint, scratchboard, photography, and stencil — confirms that Sidney's creative range was wider than any single medium. The collection moves from the child's drawing of January 7, 1967, through every medium Sidney encountered, and ends here with clay and glaze. The wedding bands (1683) come after: jewelry, the most intimate of forms. The collection is a life's complete creative range.