This ceramic sculpture, standing over two metres in height, draws inspiration from the long history of trade along the Thames, particularly during the 19th century, when the river near London Bridge was one of the busiest commercial hubs in the world. The site also once housed the infamous Clink Prison, established in the 12th century and notorious for its overcrowded and squalid conditions. The area, known as the Liberty of the Clink, was then under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, who created his wealth from taxes incurred on all the trades.

The Liberty Vessel, referencing both ship and container with the notion of freedom as a traded or carried commodity, is composed of stacked, distinct sections, each defined by its own texture, material, and glaze. This layered construction reflects the vast array of goods; tea, spices, coal, sugar, ivory and raw materials for pottery and brickmaking, that arrived by ship from Britain’s colonies and trading partners.

The glazed surfaces evoke the polluted, oily, and ever-shifting waters of the 19th-century Thames, a river that served as both lifeline and hazard. The cracked textures suggest the industrial grime and strained infrastructure of that era, reflecting the paradox of a city enriched by trade even as its prosperity came at the cost of environmental degradation.

Embedded within the work are fragments of coloured glass collected from the Thames riverbanks at low tide. Green glass, once the most common due to natural impurities in sand, was later joined by a wider palette of Victorian-era hues, including yellow-green uranium glass, pink, blue, and amber. These shards, remnants of bottles discarded or lost to the river, act as archaeological traces of the Thames’s commercial past. Their inclusion underscores the river’s dual role, as a conduit of commerce and a repository of material memory, carrying the physical remnants of London’s industrial and imperial history into the present. The Liberty Vessel, responds to the continuous stream of movement, colour, noise and cultural activity of the area that continues today.

The display is free to view from Clink Street, and is open 24 hours a day.

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Photo credit: CLINK STREET CERAMICS