Pottery Barn

Pottery Barn
From the Lost Drawings Series by Peter Bogdanov
Graphite on textured paper
Before plastic. Before glass. Before mass production and barcode scanners—there was clay. Formed by hand, fired by flame, and used by everyone from kings to farmers. In “Pottery Barn,” Peter Bogdanov reaches into the distant past, sketching vessels not as static museum pieces, but as living artifacts that once carried oil, grain, wine, and water—life itself.
Drawn in his early art school years, this piece is deceptively simple: a series of pots and jugs, rendered in precise graphite strokes. But there’s more here than a still life. Each curve holds history. Each shadow suggests the hands that shaped it—some long gone, some remembered only by what they left behind.
This wasn’t a drawing about form—it was about function. About legacy. About the kind of craftsmanship that existed before branding and fashion. When a pot’s value came from what it held and how well it served.
The objects feel worn, as if they've traveled from kiln to caravan to kitchen. They sit quietly, but not without presence. The piece evokes a time when the “pottery barn” was not a showroom—but a shed behind a village home, where earth met fire, and necessity became beauty.
The original work was lost in the 2024 hurricanes that swept through Bogdanov’s Florida studio, along with much of his early archive. This high-resolution scan remains, giving modern eyes a chance to see what the past once held—literally.
To collect “Pottery Barn” is to cradle the timeless elegance of utility. It’s a sketch of what endures—not just the object, but the soul of the hand that shaped it.