FUNCTIONAL SCULPTURE

Studio Commissions | Bess Paddington

Forms with Architectural Reliefs and
Impressions for Bess Paddington
Ongoing series, initiated 2025

Functional Sculpture’s collaboration with BESS Paddington is an ongoing collection in dialogue with the store’s architectural features, material history, and evolving floral language. The motifs draw on decorative architectural patterns found throughout Paddington’s historic interiors, including plaster cornices and pressed-tin motifs. The forms express traditional and experimental jugs and vases featuring evolving handles and small iterative shifts in form, reflecting process and experimentation.

A pressed-tin floral tile collected during the renovation of the BESS shop at 27 William Street sits within a broader library of impressions that reference the area’s domestic decoration. The collection also refrences earlier explorations such as the BESS Brick, developed in response to early brickmaking.

BESS Brick
Ongoing series, initiated 2023

Developed as part of Functional Sculpture’s collaboration with BESS Paddington, the BESS Brick draws on early brickmaking traditions and the store’s architectural language. Produced in small batches, the series explores small-scale production and repetition through surface texture and glaze experimentation.

Functional Sculpture acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. We recognise the First Peoples of this Nation and their ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to the lands, waters, seas, skies, and communities.