BLACK BAOBAB | Sculptural Ceramic

This sculpture belongs to Sandrine Herlin's Baobabs noirs, a darker register within her wider Baobabs collection, itself rooted in childhood memories of Guinea-Conakry, where the baobab is the national emblem and where the artist spent part of her early years. Trained as an illustrator before turning to ceramics, Herlin builds each tree by coil and slab, techniques she keeps deliberately spontaneous so that an assumed unevenness and a living quality remain visible in the clay.

A crown of dark, slender branches rises from a single trunk, each tip flaring into a small red earthenware cup from which a thin wire stem lifts a single gold-leafed sphere, like scattered fruit still held above the foliage. 

Materials: Stoneware, red earthenware, gold leaf.
Colors and finishes: Dark, near-black stoneware body with red-glazed and gilded accents on the crown.
Height (cm): H 56
Weight (kg): 3.5