Jane Wheeler's Blog 2013

the uses of leaves two

Posted jane -->on 20th Dec 2013

I have been trying out dyeing with leaves culled from the florist, and the garden, and the campo in Spain, wrapped into bundles with many windings of string.

here’s the bundle of silky merino jersey (30% silk/70%merino wool) after the strings that bound it have been removed.

these long pointed leaves are the eucalyptus I bought back from Spain, probably nidens, I didn’t get much colour from them here inside the bundle, but in Spain I got a slightly greenish gold. on the outside of the bundle the colour is from the same eucalyptus and cut up lemon.

these rounded leaves are eucalyptus from the florist. as I had cut up the lemon and put it to soak for half an hour with the fabric, I think it will have changed the colour.

this is the second immersion for this grey cashmere shawl, which was left unrinsed from its first contact with eucalyptus, without the lemon as above, and the florist’s leaves have left a russety imprint, a bit stronger than this looks. it’s very hard to photograph these.

I put leaves from the garden into the bundle as well as the eucalyptus. these are field maple,

and they left a distinct lemon yellow print. the three-dimensional imprint seems to stay after the first wash, it has been heat-shaped into the textile.

some of the eucalyptus from the florist has come out quite yellow on the silky merino too, this may be due to my lemon soak …

these patterns are due to the string acting as a resist, and therefore the part of the garment/piece of fabric which is going to be on the outside of the bundle needs careful consideration, as it will be an important part of the end result.

this piece, which was really a sample, has taken on a life of its own, it even looks a bit like a patchwork quilt.

I tried out blueberry leaves, which turn this amazing red in autumn. however, the heat I used probably killed the colour. I still like the soft grey mark the leaves left.

apple leaves

plum leaves, and hawthorn for their pretty shape, but the hawthorn has disappeared, so it seems that there is no colour to be had from that.

my first aim in trying out this method (which I found in India Flint‘s remarkable and beautiful book, Second Skin) was to bring a new and exciting interest to some old cashmere knit samples which failed to sell. but it also has a relationship to some of my pottery work, and to be honest, is fascinating and a little addictive in its own right, and it is taking me down new paths that I never dreamt of before. the thing that makes these wonderful to me is the imprint of the leaf, with all the wayward spotting, branching and fractal patterning of nature.

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shake it and see

Posted jane -->on 19th Dec 2013

I have been shaking it up. hipstamatic, the app I use on my iphone for photography, has a button for randomly selecting the “lens” and the “film” when you shake the phone. I have so many of these filters and framers that I wanted to experiment. here are the results

spooky

dustbowl

colour shadow

black and white vintage 1800’s

magical

leaves like golden coins

golden grass

dogwood and field maple in technicolour

apricot glow

huge blue

pinky blue

violet-orange

monochrome tangle

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the uses of leaves

Posted jane -->on 18th Dec 2013

it’s december in northern europe at the edge of the north sea, but it’s not very cold. the weather has become stormy though, and after the big destructive storm surge we are getting gales from the south every few days, with some temperatures in double figures.

in between there is sunshine, but from such a low angle, as we approach the winter solstice, that it paints the landscape warmer colours than you really feel.

we have had a few minutes of deep pink at sunrise

golden banners at sunset

and deep blue skies …. plenty of leaves left around,

which I have been pressing into clay

going back to what I was doing eighteen months ago

acorns, and clematis stems

all of which which I have discovered works extremely well under layers of oxide, slip, and chun glaze

like this one. I have also been playing with leaves a la India Flint

more on that later.

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portugal – greenery and colour, mountain villages, geology and history

Posted jane -->on 26th Nov 2013

portugal is only two hours from here

but it’s very obvious that you are no longer in Spain when you arrive in a pretty mountain village like Penha Garcia

this charming and decrepit stone house turned out to be almost completely collapsed at the back; Manfred’s dream renovation project.

flowers like roses and pelargoniums add to the colour and the doors are all brightly painted. it was olive harvest here, and pensionistas were all out picking olives with calm deliberation.

the geology is awe-inspiring – this is a syncline, layers of deep-sea floor from four hundred and eighty million years ago tipped up into dramatic formations. this is the side of the gorge, and you can see the old water-mill buildings at the bottom.

we climbed up first, to the tiny castle perched at the very top of the crag

then all the way down into the gorge

the watermills are restored and the caretaker will show you round, one of the millstones is working

when the water has finished turning the water wheel it is carried around the side of the gorge in a rock-cut channel, on the right of this photo

the most spectacular fossils are uncovered in every layer of sea floor. they are thought to be trilobite tunnels in the sea mud. they look absolutely extraordinary.

then all the lower rocks are covered in beautiful lichens

these green and lime ones are the most common

the mill leat ends up in a spectacular waterfall

the next stop was even more awe-inspiring, the inselberg (an isolated stump of granite sticking up several hundred metres from the plain) of Monsanto

the village is partly constructed of built granite blocks and partly of the enormous granite boulders which balance all over this crag

we climbed up the steep streets towards the castle

amongst the chimneys at the very top are stone-built pig pens

no longer used but very neat

and one old lady came up to feed her chickens kept in a pen up here – what a view!

almost at the top are a romanesque church and bell tower, of the most beautiful rugged simplicity. Alfonso 111 had chased out the moors by 1200 so this must just post-date that

the church is roofless but the strong carving and the plain interior survive in perfect condition

there are many stone coffins around, the topsoil must have washed away

the castle was given to the templars in the 1200’s, then later to another order, that of santiago. like the village, the immense boulders are included in its construction – it looks completely impregnable. attackers must have thought so as there seems to be no record of any battle or seige here.

a romanesque arch at the entry into the first courtyard

the most stupendous views from the battlements

and sneaky arrow/gun slots

in this main courtyard there is a big well, which is still full of water. in fact the castle’s eventual ruin came from a self-administered accident with the gunpowder store after the peninsular war. it was severely damaged and then one of the wall boulders collapsed.

on the way down we discovered a secret garden amongst the boulders

a fine place to live, but we thought that most of the houses are probably weekend places. this part of portugal is wonderfully peaceful, you feel you are in another age.

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olive harvest

Posted jane -->on 14th Nov 2013

Roger and Gabi invited us over to their mountain-side finca for an olive-picking day. the finca faces east, the view is towards Miajadas and across more and more ridges of sierra, over towards Guadelupe

they have about 400 olive trees, and a few productive orange trees, a pomegranate tree,

and a big bay tree that lives in the crack of the all- the-year-round spring – it feeds their little plunge pool too.

we pulled the olives off the branches onto the nets laid out on the ground with our hands and little rakes, but it needed several nets laid out on the terrace below as well, as the olives tended to bounce downhill.

and ones we couldn’t reach were vibrated off by Roger’s machine – Eddie Scissor Hands – which sent them pinging all over the place.

mostly though it was a gentle activity, made a little precarious by slippery nets and narrow terraces

the olives were gathered up off the nets into baskets

and by mid-afternoon there were enough picked for the next day’s pressing, and a relaxed and copious lunch of spicy meaty eastern european soup was provided. we sat around on the terrace in the autumn sunshine until the sun slid down behind the sierra.

the next afternoon we assembled to watch the process of producing extra virgin olive oil. Roger and Gabi have quite basic machinery, enough to make about 75 litres of oil, for their own use, and to give as precious christmas presents to friends and family.

the olives are sorted and put into buckets of warm water; if everything is kept warm during the process it helps to extract the oil. then they are crushed in this fearsome and very noisy machine; breaking the pits is what makes the noise.

the mash that results is put into the mats on the press; traditionally these were made of esparto grass, but now they are plastic. (old photos of poor Spanish peasants show many of them plaiting this coarse fibre for all sorts of uses, including baskets, and the mats for olive presses)

when the filled mats are nearly at the top of the press, a wooden board is put on top, and a couple of blocks, and then the winding tackle and lever. as the lever is wound round the central screw the pressure extracts the oil, with a lot of water.

as the weight of the mats increases, water starts to flow first, due to this slight pressure

the oil stays on top and the water is siphoned off

the mats are sprayed with hot water to keep everything warm

at first it is easy to turn the lever, but by the end a lot of leverage and force is needed.

at last, the beautiful green liquid can be scooped off the top with a jug. what I can’t show you is the smell – a very strong smell of olives and oil, though not that wonderful floral smell which the pure oil gives off from the bottle – really almost an oil-paint smell.

and when it is done, out comes the rye vodka ….. well earned after a hard days work.

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glazing and firing big pots part two

Posted jane -->on 30th Oct 2013

the firing progressed normally despite St Jude’s storm – in fact by the afternoon it was just windy and mostly clear.

I took it a little higher than usual – gave it an extra half hour after cone ten had gone over, and then another half hour soaking in oxidisation.

this morning it had cooled to 89C so by this afternoon after a little judicious opening of spyhole/flue/burner ports, I could start to take out the bricks.

always a bit scary the first peer inside .. but looking good.

yes, cone eleven is a bit bent, most of the firings I have had this summer have left cone eleven pretty straight.

the reveal – after all that struggle and heartache, this big pot looks gorgeous.

I got the beautiful blue I wanted

it’s very crazed and rather like quartz crystals

one of my “haptic” marks cut into the clay surface

that blue is just lovely …

on the other hand, this bowl is not lovely at all. I keep trying to get a bowl with a relatively smooth inner surface, and they seem to get worse.

it turned out that the tall pod form I put in at the last minute hadn’t been glazed on the lower half.

I got some wonderful dark chun droplets over the pink grogged stoneware, which was actually a little over-cooked and stuck to the batt wash on the shelf

a nice selection of small bottles and flagons, different clay bodies reacting in different ways to the combination of oxide, slip and glaze; I made a decision to vary the thicknesses, so I got some smooth pale ones and some dark crawly ones.

the medium sized flagon cracked across its base and a bit flaked off too. that’s the third piece made from the same batch of clay that has cracked. it was some cheap “school” clay, which I’ve never had a problem with before, and I had wedged it up with some grog, and probably some scrap clay.

a pale droplet from chun and slip over a porcelain layer impressed with wisteria stems.

another impressed bottle. I think the impression (oak leaves) works really well with the watery oxide under slip and chun.

another look at the big one. on this side the oxide painting is very strong

and on this the slip had a good old dribble. tomorrow I’ll take high resolution photos of the firing. it’ll be interesting to see if I can pick up the subtleties of the blues and greys accurately.

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glazing and firing large pots

Posted jane -->on 28th Oct 2013

although my last pot blog said that I would be reconfiguring the kiln, in fact the new parts arrived so late that I am leaving it until December, when I get back from Spain. having measured up my large pots I realised that I could squeeze them into the kiln if I changed the big and over-thick shelf that forms the floor. with 2 thinner shelves instead I had an extra half-inch of headroom. the first up was the biggest, so here it is being prepared for firing … the first coat is the oxide, in this case a mix of manganese and the less biddable black iron.

I painted the mix into the incised meander lines, and then sponged /brushed it down to take off the excess.

I have had to mix up a lot more slip and glaze and find large containers into which I can insert the big pots – allowance has to be made for overflow as well. this is the crackle slip.

the pot went in nice and deep without sending the slip over the edge, and I could just lift it out, not without some effort. wish I could find another of those big plastic containers – the one I got for the glaze is not big enough.

also I did not have enough glaze – not enough materials in stock – and my attempted clever trick to raise the level of the glaze – putting bricks in -was miscalculated – there wasn’t enough room for the pot in there, and I ended up knocking the coat of slip off the sides, and in places off the front. still, it was glazed, though terribly wet, and my neighbour helped me get it into the kiln. really this one was too big a pot for me to deal with.

it fired well, and looking at it front on, it looks quite magnificent – but –

sadly although on this side the wreckage is acceptable and looks like part of the general crawling and crackling

on this side it does not look so good. some people probably would not mind, but I couldn’t have it in a gallery, I think.

the firing went very well and I had some nice pieces out of it.

this bowl with the complex scoring is paler than the previous ones

I was particularly pleased with this smaller flagon

and really I am pleased with this; it was an awful struggle to glaze, and I have more ideas about how to do that. firstly I mixed up a lot more of the glaze!

here is the next one, which has vertical scoring/combing all down its body.

I got it slipped and glazed okay, by pouring the glaze on the bottom half, as I turned it on a banding wheel over a metal dustbin lid turned upside down. then I found I could more or less handle it, and having packed the rest of the pots,

I foolishly took the big one out on my own, got it to the kiln, but couldn’t get it into the kiln safely; it fell into the kiln, luckily missed all but the bowl – minor damage to that – but broke its spout. you can imagine how I felt!

I couldn’t believe I had just done that! anyway I got myself together again, and started again on another, very slightly smaller one, delaying the firing by a day.

oxide painted on (only black iron this time)

combination of dipping and pouring, but the other way around this time. the coats of slip were thinner, the weather was more drying, and I had it near the storage heater. also I used the heater to dry out the bowl which I had to re-slip and glaze. I am hoping for more blue glaze dribbles and some of the oxide showing through the slip.

I enlisted help to get the big pot into the kiln this time – not taking any more risks with this one – except that it is now being fired on the day of St Jude’s storm. luckily the sheds are quite sheltered and the firing is at present proceeding normally

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a few leaves and things

Posted jane -->on 21st Oct 2013

the mild and damp weather is not encouraging the leaves to turn bright colours and the wind is blowing them off the trees early this year, it seems. after a dry and warm four months the water table is being topped up, though the ponds in Bale wood and the ditches in Cakes Lane are still dry.

half the field maple leaves have gone already

the rest glow out of the sheltering hedges shining yellow and red

the bracken is just on the turn, one more stem every day

some oaks have splashes of brightness, many oak leaves are spotted with silk button spangle gall infestation

there are plenty of berries; hips and haws, masses of blackberries unharvested hanging in black ropes in the hedges

sycamore leaves and seeds everywhere, the leaves with red stems and decorated with black spot

some beautiful skies at dawn and dusk when the cloud clears, and big harvest moons at night, I didn’t need a torch to see my way to light the kiln at five thirty this morning

in the garden damson leaves are turning yellow

the apples are ready to pick, and the last of the tomatoes harvested; I have just planted broad beans, and the things I sowed a month ago are all well up; sweet peas, love in the mist, japanese salad greens, and cavallo nero.

translucent sealing-wax red guelder rose berries still on the bush, all the rowan berries were gobbled up by the birds by the end of August

another firing today – more on that when I open it ….

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the last firing with the kiln like this

Posted jane -->on 23rd Sep 2013

nearly the end of September and it starts to be dark before the firing has finished, and I suppose soon, when I light the kiln too. the apple trees are loaded down with fruit, I shall have to set up my apple store in the pot store again – a trestle table so that the mice can’t climb onto it.

I have spent two weeks making more pots to fill the gaps on the shelves, and most of them went into this firing. not the enormous ones though, I am waiting to replace the arch, which will give me another inch of height.

a thin coat of black iron oxide, making it as dribbly as possible …

a double dip of slip and a double dip of glaze. I seem to have got the right combination now, there was nothing threatening to crack and fall off. it does take two days, because I can’t handle them to glaze until the slip has dried, and the second dip of both stages has to wait until the first dip is dry enough to hold the pot. of course I could do it the other way round, dip the bottom first, and then I could hold it by the clean part of the foot … you always need to catch hold of the body of the pot though, to steady it, or to get it the right way up again …

safely packed though very wet – I always worry that I have done something wrong.

lit the next morning ( Friday) at about six am, and starting to reduce by one pm

nice and sooty! I had the pressure a fraction higher, which made it faster, even though the reduction was heavy.

off after reaching 1269C at eight pm.

almost two days to cool down – I opened it at four pm on Sunday.

you can see from the cones that it was hotter, cone ten is right over and eleven starting. also the clay they were set in is nice and toasty from the reduction.

lots of nice blue chun droplets.

and altogether fourteen small pots with successful glazing, six medium sized, and one large one.

the large one got a very thin dip of slip on its top half, allowing the oxide to show through

this is made with the pink grogged stoneware, which I haven’t treated with the oxide before – it gives it more intensity.

I think this might have crawled so much because I glazed it for the last firing and there wasn’t room, so it has been sitting around for a month. it is one of the old impressed bottles I made last year. the glaze is a little fragile on this one, so I have called it frozen lace.

there are two pots in this firing with this meander pattern, I like it very much,

so much so that I had to quickly make another extra large piece so that I could draw the meander pattern on that too.

combing, on terracotta crank, which works a treat. the pots made with this clay stuck ever so slightly to the battwash on the shelf – 1269 is a bit hot for terracotta crank! lovely and dark though.

and there were lots of beautiful blue bidori droplets in this firing, on the smaller pieces.

altogether I was very pleased with it. you can see all the pieces here

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summer’s end

Posted jane -->on 1st Sep 2013

that sad time of the year when the evenings are suddenly dark by half past eight, and fields start to be ploughed, even though this year the sunshine goes on – and on …

… stubble fields studded with the great round bales, fringed with hedges and trees in that dark dark green of late summer leaves, smudged with blue by distance.

beautiful days of sun and cloud, and night skies filled with stars, the milky way dominating, our galaxy a massy star drove-way across the sky. one night I get up at four am to see brilliant Vega staring out, looking huge, between cloud that almost smothers Cygnus, hovering above.

the wheat fields make a texture of flat pattern across the landscape, growing darker as they pass from ripe blondness to a slightly greyed down shade, a little salt-and-pepper; as I write, there are still fields of wheat unharvested, as the cold nights make the fields too damp for combining.

some late August days the mist on the coastal horizon rolls inland at night and leaves everything dripping wet, taking several hours to burn off in the morning.

other days are sharp and bright so that you can see the sea from the higher parts of the village.

more texture and pattern as the wild flowers fade and change to seed heads of structural fantasy

even a weedy field of sugarbeet, seen against the low sun of early morning, gives me pattern and colour for maybe a painting, or a design.

Cake’s Lane has been looked after this year, to the extent that there are no pretty seed heads tall against the light, and even the molehills hardly impede one’s progress. since the barley was harvested the grass and weeds around the fields have been cut, so that we can walk along the edge of the wood, peering in past the mares tails and bracken at the dark leafiness, most secret at this time of year. the roe deer keep themselves tucked away, and there are very few sightings of hares. most present are the buzzards and the wood pigeons, and green woodpeckers bobbing across from one wood to another, shouting their laughter-like call. on a few mornings muffled chiff-chaff song emanates from tall hedges, if the sun is not out.

the garden is pretty overgrown; despite the lack of rain. my hedges are infested with white bryony draping its red berried stems everywhere. the buddleias are huge and for several weeks have been full of butterflies every sunny afternoon.

commas, small tortoiseshells, peacock and red admiral sip from the honey scented flowers, occasionally colliding with bumble bees.

they settle on any warm surface, wings spread wide, for a rest I suppose, and to take in the sun’s heat. they take nectar from my turk’s cap lilies too, and the broad coned pink echinaceas. after dark my courtyard garden is full of big moths; they come for the honeysuckle and the lilies, which are most scented after dark.

this afternoon Miss T and I went out for our usual walk, finding the big wheat field cut, we were tramping through the stubble, about twenty swallows weaving and skimming over it, and what looked like a stick at a distance was a roe deer, standing almost stock still a hundred yards from the wood. she held still until we were quite close and my lurcher started making some very frustrated noises … then pronked her way down to the wood’s edge and away.

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