Click image to enlarge

Table Piece CCLXV (two hundred and sixty-five) is contained on the table’s surface, and resembles a drawing in the air. It is freely formed and is full formed and is full of gesture and incident. The surface is rusted and varnished as in Curtain Road, but there is a marked difference between the two pieces – the open light fragility of this piece contrasting greatly with the closed characteristic of the former. Table Piece CCLXV has great energy and sits on the table’s surface as lightly as a feather. It seems to herald Caro’s first ‘writing pieces’: calligraphic sculptures in steel, which he began to make in 1978.

At about this time Caro bought a coastguard’s cottage on the Dorset coast, and the form of this sculpture also calls to mind the shape and movement of wave forms.