Crustacean Gone Wild Bowl

From the New York Times: "The artist Joan Sherman works in SoHo surrounded by high-end food purveyors, but her latest inspiration was 17th-century Dutch and Flemish genre painting and those overflowing banquet tables. Ms. Sherman particularly liked the lobsters. Such delicacies were not just a merchant culture's token of luxury, in her view, but symbols of adventure, 'a kind of trophy' of sea voyages to remote corners of the earth."

"Ms. Sherman’s 'crustacean gone wild' was concocted using fragments of lobster shells cast in bronze. She commissioned the hand-blown glass bowl the lobster bears on its back and assembled the pieces in her studio."

"Her shellfish looks as if it's on a journey, perhaps to somewhere other than a pot. 'I found it great to take this ancient creature, loaded with meaning,' she said, 'and turn it into something funny and lighthearted that feels very alive.'"

Base: 16" x 16"; bowl: 12"Ø.

A limited edition of 10 bowls are $4,500 each at Artware Editions, 270 Bowery (Houston Street), in New York City; 212-463-7490.