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This small 'lake' is about five minutes walk from our house. It's where an old sand pit has been flooded when the excavating was finished. There are several of these close to our home, some quite big and they are now managed as nature reserves. As you can see I am still looking for skeletal plant structures to draw.
Yesterday I had to make a trip into Kent to pick up clay. You know the sort that comes in plastic bags! The two pots above are made from the clay straight out of the clay pit in Kent but I am still having issues with the glaze splintering on this body. I would really like to use this clay more rather than the commercial clay.
The top jug is glazed with my sesquecilicate glaze and this is the one that is causing me problems. The photo doesn't really show the difference very clearly but the bottom jug is glazed with a commercial glaze. It fits the body well but it looks very cold whereas the other glaze looks very warm and really lets the clay body 'glow'.
The other problem with the commercial glaze is that even if I compromised and decided to use it they no longer make it.
Although I don't do much work in this clay I still am testing for viable solutions so that I could at least do a series of work using it. I've not given up yet and still have some ideas to test.
Last Saturday we headed up to London to look for Barn the Spoon. He makes wonderful hand carved wooden spoons which are a real pleasure to use. After being in the studio working on my own all week I am often glad to get out at the week-end.
We walked down Brick Lane to Barn's shop but came back along Columbia Road which is full of interesting little shops. It's also cheered up with these mosaics on the wall of a local school. I thought they added a colourful high light to the road. We then went on to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
I'm on the look out for small decorative motifs that may inspire my own work. Some were on pottery but the panel with trees and hunters was on a cabinet in the new furniture gallery. By which time I was so exhausted we had to head home!
This week I've been working on these 'fish ' bowls all week. They are definitely the slowest pattern I use even though I try to draw them quite quickly and freely.
This morning I was out looking for the remains of cow parsley to do some drawing for my next batch of pots. They have very strong linear qualities that translate onto the pots well. Before heading home I called into a local 'vintage' shop where I found this slipware cider jar. Fortunately it survived the journey home intact - unlike the cow parsley. Does anyone recognise the potter's mark? I wonder if it's French.
For many of the designs I do on my pots I make templates. I place these templates on the leather hard pots to draw an outline- this insures that I can get them in the right place as mistakes can't be rectified.
I now have hundreds of these cut out drawings all over the place. So i was wondering if I could use them for any other purpose.
I decided to try using them for some embroidery. Well if I thought pottery was a slow process I hadn't tried embroidery. If I ever finish this piece I don't think I will be repeating the process.
Here are some plates I got out of the kiln on Monday. Again using the template method. I'm calling these the alphabet plates. There are a few more to go through the kiln but again I'm not sure about these. I'd seen some old children's plates in an antique shop that gave me the idea.
When I restated after the Christmas break I had quite a few pots waiting to be glazed. In some ways that has been good because I've had finished pots through the kiln which has made me feel I am making progress.
It has also helped to warm the studio up which is a bonus given the really cold weather. In fact, I put a biscuit firing on before I came in tonight and I am already looking forward to the comfort of a warm studio tomorrow.
Today I thought I should take some photos of this recent work. Usually I take photos outside. I wait for a very bright sunny day and then take them in a shady area. However with the very wet and cold weather we've been having I decide that I should try to take some photos in doors.
The top three pictures and the bottom two are taken in doors. Then I thought I should brave the cold and damp and take some outdoors so that I could compare the two. They are picture four and five.
Neither are exactly what I want and I'm thinking when I finish the pots I am currently working on it may be time to look for a professional photographer.
We went out to China before Christmas to visit my daughter who lives in Xi'an. We had a wonderful time and returned in time for Christmas. ( You may be pleased to hear that the coat didn't make it back I thought it best to leave it in China).
We did many excursions and ate a huge range of Chinese food, visited plush, luxurious hotels and villages living in traditional Chinese style which probably hasn't changed for hundreds of years.
However, there was not much of pottery interest. There was of course the terra-cotta warriors. There certainly were armies of them and they were definitely impressive.
There was Xi'an's pottery museum. Xi'an was once China's capital and the beginning of the silk route. The museum was amazing with it's wonderful tri-coloured horses and beautiful carved celadon vases.
But, of course, best of all was spending time with my daughter and her husband. Mark and my middle son Toby also came so there was much laughter and fun.
I have hundreds of photos so I might just post a few more at some stage.
You may be forgiven if you think I have retired as I've posted so little recently. But no, I've been steadily potting away. All the work tops in the studio are crowded with pots waiting to go to Farnham.
Tomorrow we set up in The Maltings ready for the week-end festival. Check out this link to see who's exhibiting and whats on.
Life has been very busy with a challenging number of 'things' to sort.( Cars needing attention, central heating breaking down, visas to be applied for. You get the picture).
I like to be able to concentrate on the pottery and really give it all my attention so the last few weeks have been too full of distractions. But somehow I feel that I have managed to keep working and retain a sense of humour.
It was half-term last week so I headed to Wales to visit my parents. Whilst there I visited the gallery in Carmarthen.http://www.orielmyrddingallery.co.uk/
The exhibition last week was the Jerwood Makers Open. One of the exhibitors was William Shannon who had set himself the brief to create a workshop for an imaginary potter. Just the mention of pottery had me hooked. The accompanying programme said that this imaginary potter 'has limited resources (as potters tend to).'
The outcome was delightful and I'm sure some of us might like a pocket sized raku studio. Glenn Adamson ( Head of Research at the V and A) who wrote the accompanying essay, suggests that the experiment is 'entirely absurd, or at least symbolic...Symbolically, it is a miniature temple to self-reliance. In practice he could never have made it without the support of the Jerwood Maker's Open'.
To some extent I can see his point. William had made tiles for the exterior of the studio by raku firing tiles. On that scale a slow process. After all if you want individually hand made hung tiles you go to my friend at Babylon Tile Works. Just see the rows of tiles he produces below. However, I found it quite encouraging to think that people are looking at the idea of producing from locally sourced materials and being self-sufficient.
I was tempted to start 'playing ' with the tools and materials but I don't think it was meant to be inter-active.
I take 'The World of Interiors' magazine. In one of the issues it had mentioned an antique shop that shows Welsh pottery. That was enough for me - I was off in search of Tim Bowen Antiques. I was not disappointed. He had a wonderful collection of slipware from Buckley. I think it's joyful, lively and fresh looking. So simple yet with it's treacle, honey and amber colours warm and practical. Of course the use of script on it is also of interest to me.
Tomorrow I'm off to hear a talk by Alison Britton at The Crafts Study Centre in Farnham. On the one hand I feel I cann't afford to take any time off work but I also feel I need to get out of the studio every now and again and expose myself to other influences.
