My use of quotation marks signifies that the vessels in question are not in fact connected with the practice of any identifiable or genuine ritual or ceremony, but rather are meant to be evocative of all manner of historical forms whose defining characteristics arose from their intrinsic relationship to the beliefs, the rituals, the customs of a specific culture.

These artists--that is, artists who make vessels or forms that are "ceremonial" or "ritual" or "votive" in title only these artists likewise run the risk of making vacuous pastiches of the rock-crystal reliquaries or the elaborate silver-gilt presentation cups of old. So, once again, we are confronted with a prospect of precarious territory, artistically speaking, the equivalent, as it were, of conceptual quicksand, silently and surely awaiting the unsuspecting and the naive.

Only the wily, the intelligent and the experienced should seek to enter this treacherous realm: treacherous, that is, on account of its sweetly seductive nature, its siren-like call, a call that can prove fatal to artists who do not truly know their own hearts and minds, to borrow an especially saccharin cliche from the hallowed, or was it harrowing, halls of political rhetoric. As we have noted already, Hirst makes vessel forms in glass of an explicitly" ceremonial complexion, and indeed Hirst identifies his works with titles such as "Offering Bowl" "Votive Bowl" and "Guardian Vessel".

If my argument is to be that these forms by Hirst demonstrates successful and compelling interpretation of a notoriously difficult idiom - and plainly this is my argument - then I should attempt to explain why and how Hirst has successfully navigated his way through the hazards and pitfalls inherent in this long-abused idiom.