''The experience of handling one of Alan Meredith’s oaken vessels is one of surprise – they are strong and light, oak is not usually so weightless, the pleasure of rotating the vessel between two hands, of feeling the texture and gentle centre of gravity, is the pleasure of handling a small boat, a taut ribbed hull – buoyant. At their base, the keel, the oldest densest core, at the gunnel the recent sapwood, a vertical axis of time and growth. As one moves the sculpted shell around it reveals its arrhythmic form, similar to the trunk of a tree, a twisted torso. But there is a muffled music within the form, a temptation to drum, to test the warm bright pitch, to even talk into the form and breath in the workshop aroma within.''
Excerpt from Vessels and Geometries essay by Stephen Tierney in his Alan Meredith | Quercu exhibition catalogue.