Strauss & co - 22 October 2012, Cape Town

155 Dorothy Kay, ‘William Shakespeare’, 1953 a glazed earthenware book-end bust of William Shakespeare, with books, scrolls and a quill below, the whole raised on a plinth base with inscription, signed and dated 1953, 25cm high R10 000 – 15 000 LITERATURE Marjorie Reynolds, Dorothy Kay, Everything You Do is a Portrait of Yourself, Alec Marjorie Reynolds, Rosebank, 1989, page 253, where this figure is discussed: ‘Darlings all - Did a Shakespeare Statue today - & all the while I could hear Marda saying ‘Oh I would’nt have done him like that - He should be this ... or that...’ & so I battled against odds! Its very dull really - but will make a book end - the other (end) still to be done, dont know what - all poets and writers look the same Swinburne, Bacon - Chaucer etc: I thought of Lady Macbeth - or Othello -? & by the way in the Drinkwater old volumes on literature, there’s a photograph of Forbes Robertson as Othello, looking very good - very pale in colour - well dressed - Just the job! Then I thought maybe an opposite end of a lute & pipes & scrolls & this & that - a still life - How’s that - no more clay - used last ounce ¬had to keep hollowing it out to get last bits! like scraping all the best bits out of an egg!!! High forehead - done from an old print of him that is supposed to be the best likeness - I added the laurels for richness - & deserving!!’ 155 143 detail 41