Certainly.

“Most bowls that I make are quietly purchased, and then people go home with them,” said Steven Glass, an artist in residence at Virginia’s Museum of Fine Arts, when reached by telephone.

He made the Bowl.

He made it in early December, he said Thursday. He was experimenting with a new technique, called wax resisting, which involved dipping the Bowl in a series of glazes and then painting the glaze with wax.

Shortly before Christmas, he received a call from the museum director’s office telling him that the museum had been contacted by the Board of Elections. The board was interested in acquiring a receptacle to be used for the tiebreaker.

“I knew the bowl had to be deep enough to conceal the winning ballots,” Glass said, so he selected five potential bowls to show a two-person museum committee.

“They picked them up and handled them. It took them about an hour to decide.”

 The film cans and slips of paper that were placed in The Bowl. (Timothy C. Wright/For The Washington Post)
He had a good feeling about the bowl that ultimately won: “The colors, I thought were politically neutral, in the sense that it was blue on the outside and red in the middle.”

“I saw that one, and I liked it, and so that’s the one that I selected,” said Jan Hatchette, deputy director of communications for the museum and one member of the committee. “It was inspiring because of its color, its beauty. That one just stood out to me. It was just very elegant.” She also thought it would photograph well on television.

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