Bowls have been part of the human existence since we began to hold things and want to keep them. Wood turning bowls has been part of life ever since someone realized that a piece of wood could be hollowed to hold water, food or other treasures. Some of the first indications we have of wood turners are pictures of Egyptian turners on the side of pyramids where one turned wood while another made the wood move with a bow. They were making bowls.
Wood turning bowls became a common need in the villages of the world to the point where "Turner" is almost as common a name as "Smith." The village wood turner would produce a great deal of the needed kitchen supplies known as "treen" and many of these would be bowls.
Bowls are so common that we forget how elegant they can be. To turn a bowl is not a hard thing, to turn an elegant bowl is difficult. It must have the proper ratio of diameter to height but the mathematical formulas that might be thought to help disappear into insignificance. Turned wooden bowls are generally, like most bowls, fairly small as compared to a piece of significant architecture or a statue by Henry Moore. While I have worked on bowls as much as four feet in diameter and have seen larger, the champion size at the time of this writing is about 7 feet. Most so called large bowls will be 14 to 18 inches around and for most families a 10 to 12 inch salad bowl is big enough.
All of this means that bowls are looked at from a lot of different angles. That salad bowl you see as you approach the table changes in perspective when you sit down. The question in design is how to balance everything so that a bowl seen from above is also elegant seen side on and from a vast degree of angles in between. Will it look as good for the six foot two person at the side as it does for the five foot four one at the head of the table?
Wood turning bowls becomes then, a life long search for the "right" bowl. Of course this is true for the potter as well as the turner and for the ceramicist as well. A quick look through the history of pottery reveals the search for shape in our common bowl as an ongoing part of the story of mankind. Wood turners of today are in good company.
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