This is a large corrugated bowl by Richard Zane Smith.   For his pottery, the coils are smoothed out on the inside but left exposed on the outside of the vessel.  This distinctive style of pottery is a revival of the pre-historic concept of corrugated pottery.  The earliest corrugated pieces were often baskets that had clay applied to them and then fired, creating a “corrugated” appearance.  This bowl reveals his thin coils from the base to near the rim. On the rim, they are etched vertically, to look almost like fringe.  There is a frog in relief on the edge of the bowl.  The inside of the large bowl is incised and painted with a snake. The handle is made from wood he finds near his house in Oklahoma. The handle is one of those amazing pieces that has grown around a stone!  The handle is attached after the firing.  I asked Richard about the design and he said he came up with it after a rainstorm.  There were frogs on the bank of the creek by his house and a snake in the water.  He wanted to capture a sense of nature with the bowl and the imagery.  It is a striking and creative piece.  The bowl is from 2007.  It is signed on the bottom, “Ricard Zane Smith”.  It is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration or repair.