Another trip

On Sunday we headed off to Brick Lane for lunch and a stroll around the markets. There are some great retro shops down Cheshire Street. That's Mark leaning against Labour and Wait's sign. The sign above was outside the British Library. I use my local library frequently and they are able to get quite rare books for me on loan from The British Library. The sign was outside the library. I tell my students that no one has had an original idea since original sin and that they just have to work at researching ideas. So I was quite taken by the quote!!

The pots on these shelves represents almost a whole weeks work (there are a few more bowls and a tile panel). Sgraffito is quite a slow process. I don't anticipate doing much work this week as the boys are on half term and Mark has taken the week off.

Trip to Farnham

As my studio is at home I sometimes hardly move further than the few feet to the studio and back to the house! So Saturday I decided we would go for a jaunt to Farnham. It's less than an hours drive and every where was still white with snow. We went to the Crafts Study Centre which had a great little exhibitiion of pots. A whole mixture off styles from Leach and Lucie Rie to Philip Elgin. They also had an exhibition of furniture by Matthew Burt. He had also designed the display area for the pots so you may get some views of it on the link. We had taken our 12 year old boy with us who (surprisingly don't you think) was not impressed with the pots or furniture! I think I may need to go again as you can book a sesson to see the archives. Sunday was hectic as my daughter is emigrating this year we invited some friends around and I cooked a Chinese meal. We had thought about 40 people would come but there were probably about 60. I'm now in recovery mode but hopefully everyone enjoyed themselves.
This was the snow in our garden last week. Our boys had never really seen snow like this before and they had a great time. They had an unplanned two days off school. On Sunday the snow vanished as quickly as it had come but today there was some flooding.

Finding direction

Here are a few of the pots out of the kiln this morning. I thought I should post some thing in case you thought I had taken a holiday! The first of the bowls with a horse theme came out. I like the shape and the writing around the outside but now I need to do my homework on the images I use. It takes me a while to work out what images to use even if they are very simple. I've thrown 8 or 9 bowls the same shape and some jugs and my drawing needs to stay ahead of the throwing really perhaps I will have some drawing time over the week-end.

I am now downing my paint brush and stepping away from this exercise! I may reconsider if I find any different feathers. At first I could hardly find one or two feathers but all that changed when I came across a dead pheasant that had been hit on the road. I now have plenty of pheasant feathers but very little else. If you remember I had set myself the task of recording all the feathers I found.

Sgraffito exhibition

I had a job to work out how to get those last photos on. It's my daughter's birthday today so the whole family have been here for dinner-great fun butI had to abandon blogging to cook dinner!
If I come across anything sgraffito or slipware related I get quite excited. Today I found a link to an exhibition dedicated to slipware. It's like a bit of majic.
Here is a link to the exhibition called Sgraffito 3D


Hope you enjoy!! Also click on collection and you will find a whole catalogue of all the pots.

Bowls with horses

Slow week

I have had a very slow week. Doing things for the family like trips to the dentist and lifts to and from school have used quite a slice of time. I have loads of pots under polythene but very little finished.
The bowl above is a regular pouring/mixing bowl I make. I want to try and use this shape and adapt it to take illustrations. I like the way the shape encloses space whereas my other bowls are very open. Also I thought it would be interesting to see the lettering standing vertically and going around the pot.


Here are some I've experimented with this week. I am not quite there with the decoration yet. I would like to use horses as a decorative motif and I am sure I've seen some sgraffito bowls somewhere with horses but I cann't remember where! I could really do with designated blocks of time to develop my drawing but with four children I have to spread my time out sometimes. Good job there is a whole new fresh week next week to explore all these ideas.

School

Didn't get any potting done today as I was teaching at a local school. They want to use clay more with their children and so my brief was to 'show the teachers how to make animals using clay'. We had great fun playing with clay for the day and they even pay me. Wonderful. I had 20 teachers to work with -imagine what a good time their students are going to have when they are presented with clay for the first time.


Tuesday I had a bit of a clear up. How's this for a neat tidy cupboard? When I open this cupboard up it has a wonderful smell-I think it's probably because I associate the smell with making pots!!