The Answser is an Etrog

I've been wondering where the shape for the last batch of bowls came from- I knew that they referred to something very specific I'd seen recently and made a note of,but couldn't quite recall the source.It felt just like the smile on the Cheshire Cat [in "Alice in Wonderland"] that remained hanging in the air after the cat had faded away.Then,over Shabbat [when I'm not supposed to be thinking about pottery] it popped into my head.Actually,I was sitting at the Shabbat table staring straight at it- our etrog from last Succot,now rather shrivelled,sitting on the back of the bench.When fresh,it had a nice jut from waist to shoulder,set off by a satisfying sharp vertical curve from shoulder to neck,and I thought [a couple of times] 'that would make a good shape for a tea-bowl'.Not surprising,since I find the two [etrogs and tea-bowls] closely related,our appreciation of their beauty being in both cases something that we have to learn [in great detail] rather than something we might naturally agree on as beautiful.
So I forgot the tea-bowl bit of the idea,but the shape emerged [quite spontaneously] when I was looking for a different and suitable shape to show off the experimental terra sig.,given the tendency of bowls [i.e. the bowl shape] to place more [visual] emphasis on the inside than on the outside:suitable because,as you can see,it has a nearly-straight rim,while still being bowlish,if there is such a word.
This process- of only finding out what the influences are on one's work in retrospect- seems to happen a lot.It's a lot of fun.