1990s Early Work Artisan Crafted Mahogany Centerpiece Bowl by Howard Michael Klepper

Early Work Artisan Crafted Mahogany Centerpiece Bowl.
Artist: Howard Michael Klepper.
Origin: Berkeley, California, USA.
Material: Mahogany.
Production date: 1999.

Description: Offered is an artisan carved and turned mahogany bowl, atop features a shallow (.25 Depth x 2 Width inches) concave border well, interior bowl (2 Depth x 6.5 Diameter inches), tapered body supported by a flared pedestal base (1.75 inch Diameter). Signed/etched by the artist on verso, “Howard Michael Klepper 1999.”

Overall measures: 10.75 Diameter x 2.5 Height inches.
Approx. weight: 14 ounces.

About the artist and his work: Like many, Howard Michael Klepper’s first experience with the lathe was in a junior high school shop class, where he turned a mahogany bowl that remains in his mother’s home. In the years that followed, his life led in different directions – he practiced law and taught philosophy at Stanford University. Yet a love of woodworking remained, including building and repairing guitars, and in 1997 he left academia to devote himself to making wooden objects.
“Wood is the natural material par excellence; no two pieces are alike,” he offers, citing a reason for utilizing the material that is familiar to all of those who have taken to it. “This is more pronouncedly the case with the burls and other highly-figured woods with which I often work.”
The vessels of Howard Michael Klepper bring to mind formal human figures, standing upright like proud chess pieces. They are created using a large boring bar of his own design, and long, curved hollowing tools that he made in a blacksmith’s forge. The artist is driven by the challenge of extending his capacities, as well as those of the wood turning medium. As might be expected of a retired professor, his interests are also philosophical.
Both the structural and aesthetic properties of a given piece of wood set parameters for the turner’s design,” Klepper explains. “Design is further constrained by the use of lathe turning, which imposes the circle-considered by the ancient Greeks to be the perfect geometry of the wood.”
There is an inherent tension in the turned wood object between the formal and natural, between the simple and the complex,” he continues. In designing a piece, I believe that the turner must confront and explore these conflicts. In some of my pieces I seek to bring opposing elements into harmony. In others I present them in a state of dynamic tension.” (Kevin Wallace, Woodwork 12/2004)

Exhibitions & shows: Klepper had a couple of solo shows and even had pieces in national shows. But by 2001, he says, “I had done most of the things I’d set out to do in woodturning and came back to guitarmaking—this time with more woodworking experience and more of a sense of how to make things happen. It’s been all guitars ever since.” (Scott Nygard, Howard Klepper Guitars, 2010)

The Inspired Vessel, an exhibition curated by Sara L. Cannon and Scott Canty, celebrated the form and showed how contemporary artists reinterpreted it with an understanding of its history and a vision of its future. Klepper’s work was shown along with six other artists at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, 2004.