Taking “memory vessels” to their logical extreme, some fans of Dutch artist Bouke de Vries’ ceramic sculptures have gone so far as to tattoo the artworks on their bodies.

Why? Well, Bay Area viewers can find out for themselves.

The “memory vessels,” composed of porcelain shards held in transparent glass vases, join what de Vries calls his “exploding vessels” and several sculptural still lifes in a small but unforgettable show at the Legion of Honor. Regardless of individual opinions about permanent ink, visitors will likely find de Vries’ objects deeply moving.

“Guan Yin in a Cloud of Plates,” the largest piece in “Bouke de Vries: Memories in Porcelain,” greets visitors in the lobby while another seven in the Bowles Porcelain Gallery can be found on the museum’s lower level. Placed throughout the permanent collection, de Vries’ contemporary ceramics appear both as the continuation of porcelain’s rich history and also as a welcome rejoinder to the art market’s obsession with perfection.

Porcelain’s wonders as a material — its strength, bell-like ping, refined translucency — sparked a craze for Chinese imports in 18th century Europe, where wealthy buyers feverish withmaladie de porcelainerisked bankruptcy buying vast quantities of the vessels. Nowadays, fine examples of porcelain fetch increasingly astronomical prices at auction — as long as they possess no flaws.

Working as a ceramics restorer for 30 years, de Vries routinely encountered what seemed to him to be a paradox: Porcelain was highly valuable intact, but nearly worthless once broken or marred.

“We will buy an ancient sculpture with (its) arms missing,” said de Vries, citing the Venus de Milo, a famous — and priceless — classical statue of the goddess of love that lost its arms to time. “But if there’s a tiny chip in a bowl, it’s regarded as worthless. It’s a very strange value system.”

Affection and respect for the broken ceramics he handled compelled de Vries, who grew up in the Netherlands, to start making art himself 15 years ago. He moved to London at age 21 after studying for three years at the Design Academy Eindhoven. He transferred to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the U.K., and after graduation worked in the fashion industry with John Galliano, Stephen Jones and Zandra Rhodes.

After seven years, seeking quieter work, de Vries embarked upon a restoration career by training at the West Dean College in Sussex before beginning his artistic endeavors.

Eventually de Vries found himself thinking, “let the damage be.”

In his “exploding vessels,” shards of porcelain pause suspended on rods. The pieces float in an arrested moment of fragmentation. The broken object presents as whole, even if its pieces will never entirely join together again.

“In archaeological ceramics, the breaking of an object is the most traumatic event in its life,” explained de Vries, 62, by phone from his home in London. “I want to capture that moment and freeze it.”

In highlighting trauma, de Vries moves ceramics into the realm of art objects that have their own life histories. He believes breakage does not detract from the artwork’s enchantment, but adds to the richness of the sculpture’s history.

Butterflies, a symbol of rebirth in Dutch 17th century, dot the exploded vessels. Rather than promising new life at an unspecified future date, the butterflies appear as a sign that the new life has already occurred before us.

And not all fractures are permanent. De Vries sutures some of the pieces with gold in his form of kintsugi, a Japanese ceramics repair technique.

To be clear, de Vries works with materials that are already “damaged” — “I don’t go around smashing 18th century vases,” he said. Sometimes clients send him ceramic fragments or he will seek materials at auction houses that measure up to his aesthetic and material standards.

All of his work asks the viewer to appreciate the long history of an object, and not just the literal longevity of the porcelain plates, vessels and bowls that build his sculptures. In “Worcester Still Life with Lemons,” the most complex artwork in the show, de Vries invites us to consider what happens to a still life after the painting has been made and the painter has put away the palette.

Here de Vries imagines porcelain knocked off a table and fruit rotting, forgotten in some studio corner. He gives us a broken openwork porcelain basket haphazardly balanced on sharp shards. The vessel struggles to contain more blue-and-white fragments and lemons desiccated, dry past utility. The artwork contrasts to 17th century still life paintings replete with luscious lemons half unpeeled, skins spiraling enticingly on silver platters. Curator Martin Chapman said it aims to “piques people’s interests, having contemporary alongside traditional ceramics.”

The show is the second the Legion has commissioned from a contemporary artist, and let’s hope it becomes a regular series. (A nod to local history with a piece on the 1906 earthquake doesn’t quite equal the rest of the show’s sophistication, but you won’t mind.)

De Vries’ belief that “there’s such a beauty in damage” resonates with so much of human experience. You might find yourself heading to the tattoo parlor after a visit.

Letha Ch 'ien是一位自由writer.