The detail that jumped out at me first is the rim: the maker left a natural live edge with the burl spikes still standing proud along it, instead of cutting them back to a clean circle. Those little pokey points give the whole piece a wild silhouette, and paired with the burl figure, radial ray patterns and small insect cavities across the rim and exterior, it reads as a bowl straight out of the tree.
It was mounted on a four-jaw chuck on a wood lathe, and at this stage it is still attached to the tenon held in the chuck. The inside is hollowed out and the exterior is convex, and the maker turned it by hand on the lathe spindle to present it. The wood sounds like it fought back: very dry and hard, described as a beast to turn, with plenty of bug holes and dry spots through it.
The finishing state is where the open questions sit. The bowl is turned but not fully sanded yet, and only water has gone on the surface so far to bring out the grain. A small sanded patch was wiped with 80-grit abrasive. Sanding and finishing come next, and the finish itself has not been settled on; the idea under consideration is a shellac base coat with a thin epoxy layer over it.
I think keeping the bug holes unfilled is a brave and honest call. Filling would take too long, the maker says, and in my view the voids belong to the story of the wood anyway. The piece already looks lovely to my eye, and I am curious how the shellac and epoxy route will sit on all that figure.