Easter Break

Happy Easter everybody! This is our 'Easter tree'. We are in holiday mood and have spent the day gardening and enjoyed a walk around the lake. The birds are all busy pairing up and nest making.The herons have flown over the house twice and they are quite a sight up close.
This is my orchid which I am posting for Miri . It may look fairy small but it has been blooming for months. I was going to throw it away before Miri potted it up in one of her bowls. Miri has been setting up a pottery in Puerto Rico and it's looking really good.
Finished these bowls last week but I don't think I will get too much done this week with the boys all at home. Maybe a firing or two to keep things moving along.

Ist clay pit pot

More pots out of the kiln today. Most of them were work I did with my youth group-we had an egg cup making competition. Next week they get them back with a Cadbury cream egg in them. I did have a few of my own pots in the firing though. When I finished this bowl I was going to break it up as I wasn't very happy with it but I fired it anyway. My college tutor always said you should live with a pot for a while even if you were going to destroy it and see what you could learn from it.
This is the first pot made with the clay from the pit. It's here for Melvyn to see his clay all fired up. I have split this with some of the standard clay I use. The other pots are now in a biscuit firing. The pot above is actually the same one as in the picture below but the flash seems to have lightened the colour. It's a bit on the heavy side as I was nervous to throw it too thin because some of the 'bits' were quite large. The clay body is a lovely warm terracotta and I wish that I had left some of the clay 'naked' now. I've still got some to glaze so I may do that with them. I like this clay very much but I am not too sure what I can do with it without working out a way of extracting some of the larger grit. I have enjoyed using it very much and it has been refreshing to try a totally different clay.

out and about

Here are some of this weeks pots out of the kiln over the week-end. I have cautiously started to use the green glaze. I had wanted to glaze the inside of the pot cream but hadn't thought it through because of course I couldn't easily do that on a colander!! Today and yesterday I have been mixing glaze and loading another glaze firing. I finished decorating the big bowls in the Kent clay so I am waiting to get some through a glaze firing. They biscuit fired OK.

This lake is an old disused sand pit. It's about five minutes walk away from our house and is really attractive. There is always something to see-birds, plants rabbits. Every time I go for a walk there I wonder why I don't go more often. Mark had some leave to use up last week so we had a few walks. I am going to set myself the task of getting out for a walk more often. If I go right around the lake the whole walk only takes me half an hour. (There is a much bigger lake a little further over and that takes an hour to walk). I wonder if I need a dog to get me out?

Experimenting

Yesterday I played with the clay that came from the clay pit. The folk there gave me a couple of bags to try. I haven't enjoyed myself throwing so much for ages. It was very plastic which I was surprised at. It threw wonderfully. There are what initially looked like bits of grit in it. However, when I picked some out it appears to be harder bits of clay as they are easily crushed. I am not sure how it will work when I try to sgraffito on it tomorrow. The large flat bowl above is the clay straight from the pit-can you see the amazing colour.
I threw the jugs with some of my usual clay mixed in. About 1 part ordinary terracotta to 2 part clay pit clay. It probably wasn't very sensible to throw larger things first ( 2 kilos)- maybe I should have tested it with some egg cup sized ware! But it was just such a joy to throw I got carried away. Anyway, I've had two enjoyable days. It will be quite a challenge to slip the jugs tomorrow.

A very jolly jolly!

I have had a large number of family commitments this last week but I am still working away. These few pots are the only ones to come out of the kiln this week. I put these in just to fill up some space when I fired my students' work.
Yesterday we went to London and looked around Somerset House and The Courtauld Gallery. I wanted to go to Somerset House because in the latest edition of Ceramics Review they said that the Craft Potters Shop ( now Contemporary Ceramics) was moving there by the end of February. Well they may well be moving but they certainly haven't arrived!!
The Courtauld Gallery was interesting -Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh Renoir and so many more- But today was definatley the best potter's outing. Clay- tons of it!! A whole clay pit in fact.
Clay straight out of the clay pit.
The clay pit. The clay was in all different shades. There was the softest coffee colour, deeper ochres and the brightest red terracottas.
Clay tiles drying on racks in the poly tunnels.


All over Kent there are old houses with hung tiles and beautiful tiled roofs. You can see the tiles fresh out of the kiln. They look wonderful because they have attractive warm shades with subtle variations of colour.
Just to make the day I came away with some clay to experiment with. I am really looking forward to this. I have two more casseroles to decorate and then I can set to on this clay. Tiles out of the kiln.

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.