the first wintery weather of the year, and a high pressure system gave us pretty frost pictures today – even nettles become decorative with delicate crystalline structures drawing white lines around each vein and jagged edge.
thistles have every hair outlined.
the sun was melting everything in its path
but in the shadows frosted leaves sparkled
and pattern gleamed softly
back in the shed I have added another layer to the porcelain, by washing china clay slip over it then sprinkling on china clay powder, and gently pressing it in with the rolling pin.
three tallish bottles to fill a space in the kiln
and another rectangular piece – there are a few of these now -
the impression of stems from the garden weakens and sometimes ruptures the pot wall, making interesting non-curved planes as the slab is bent around.
these crusty surfaces on darker clays work well with the saltmarsh and chalk beach glazes, but the white st thomas stoneware clay will make a difference, I need plenty of them so I can experiment.
a break for family Christmas and I am off again. some good news this week, I have been selected for Hatfield ceramics fair, Art in Clay, 6th, 7th, 8th July, in the grounds of Hatfield Hall. so I have to dust off my tent and find a trailer to borrow – and work out how a space of 4 metres by 4 metres with a couple of tables can be made to show off pots ….
so – continuing from the work I was doing with porcelain, I began by opening a bag of white St Thomas clay – a good almost-white stoneware – sprinkling my dust-to-large-bits-grog on it, impressing oak leaves and the hole-patterned piece of wood.
but recently I saw a beautiful and strange portrait of a woman wearing a high collar of ash twigs, by the Irish artist Alice Maher, and this has got me thinking of how to bring Nature into my work in a symbolic way. my garden is full of bare twigs at the moment; dogwood is looking particularly sculptural.
native dogwood; the twigs are a wonderful red colour.
I found an old bag of Southern Ice porcelain (from china clay mined in New Zealand) in just the right condition to be spread over the stoneware clay with a knife – a beautiful surface to impress into.
the twigs embed into it deeply and rupture the slab of clay as it is bent round to make the roughly cylindrical shapes. further bending for an oval base is impossible as the clay is still soft, and won’t support independent upright pieces. ( at this time of year there is not much dry in the air and I tend to work with the clay in a softer condition than in warmer weather).
some enthusiasm, and adaptation of working method to to the sticky and slightly floppy material produced a flurry of new pieces.
softer shapes with more flow to them ..
and at the end, using up cut out pieces which were too small to make a curved wall pot produced a softly rectangular vessel.
this is not quite new; a long long time ago I was strictly rectangular, but this is much softer, and quite exciting. more to come!
five days of speaking Spanish in an all male working environment with Antonio, Raphael, and Carlos, the three brothers at Moreno Leon in Torrejoncillo – one of the few remaining makers of traditional Spanish terracotta storage jars – tinajas. a privilege, an utter indulgence of me on their part, and a fantastic inside view of something that almost died out in the UK with Isaac Button, the last traditional English potter.
the telephone, plastered with clay, next to Rafa’s wheel, jammed between ear and shoulder while he throws or coils – an indispensable part of running a modern business which is not usually given access to a British studio potter’s workshop.
the workshop is half of a huge L-shaped barn-like structure; the other half houses the kiln, this container-sized green metal box, gas fired, computer-controlled, which replaces the open top updraught wood fired kiln the family were using even in 1989, when photos were taken for the book, la tinajeria tradicional en la cerámica española. Antonio told me they would use encina, evergreen oak, and finish the firing with gum cistus, jara, the incense scented shrub of the extremaduran maquis. the smell was wonderful, he said, with no real nostalgia for a laborious process. the back of this space is given over to clay preparation and storage, something I did not investigate, due to lack of time, and not wanting to disrupt their workday. the clay is local, from land they own about 3 km from the pueblo.
moreno leon goes back seven generations in the family to the first whose name is known, in the late eighteenth century, but probably well before that. Spain used to be dotted with tanajerias, every pueblo with a usable clay source would be making storage jars for keeping wine and oil, probably since the Romans; now this is the only one in our province, Caceres.
the jars are made with a combination of throwing and coiling methods; the bases all thrown on these low electric wheels, then coils added, and tidied up on the wheel. the pots are trundled about on jack trolleys, and take about 4 days to make, depending on size, being allowed to stiffen up naturally in between steps.
I was given a thrown base to start coiling on
but my pot, a cono, the straight sided typical extremaduran household jar, stayed off the wheel after that.
Antonio sneaked some photos without my being aware; this taken across the lip, the boca, of the piece he was working on. compare the beautiful regular coil he has attached, to the raggedy edges of mine …..
Carlos is the real coiling specialist.
here he is adding a coil. looks easy, doesn’t it!
two kinds of really big pot – this big-bellied shape
which they make with the deep ridges too (surcos)
and the big conos.
third day; before continuing to coil the outside is scraped and smoothed with a piece of bamboo, then paddled with the ping-pong bat-shaped wooden paddle – there are at least three different shapes, concave, convex, and flat, beautiful objects in their own right. I worked from four in the afternoon until eight in the evening every day (their working day is eight to eight, with two hours for lunch) and the pot was left uncovered in between, which allowed just the right amount of drying.
portrait of Carlos, by Antonio.
smaller tinajas with surcos, native to Galicia.
fourth day; scraped, smoothed and paddled.
now I have a platform to stand on. it is meant for the huge ali-baba jars, so I have to watch my feet.
fifth day; ready for the lip and the bung.
I got the lip on, with no wheel, after considerable trouble, fussing, and fiddling. Antonio showed me how, but I don’t have his experience and skill, of course.
the bung hole goes on in a similar way. I am so envious sometimes of the dexterity of potters who have been handling clay for a lifetime.
Antonio working on a set of short conos; he explained that if it is done right there will be no drip of wine or oil to waste or make a mess.
a combined signature to finish. my spiraling decoration allows a camino for the ants, I was told reproachfully.
and here we are, Antonio, Carlos, the cono, and the apprentice tinajera.
at last, a firing from which every piece came out well. besides getting the right glaze on the right pot at the right thickness, and placing them in the right position in the kiln, real attention to detail during the firing is needed to achieve a good result.
an amazing green flame through the 1200′s, as I tried to keep the reduction light. between 1030 C and 1100 I had a strong smoky reduction, a little flame peeping out of the spyhole brick, and a very strong sulphur stink.
the last cone which is only a little bent is cone 11, signifying if bent over fully, 1300 C, or the equivalent heat work – I turned off the gas when the pyrometer read 1262; the slowness of my firing and the reduction produce the same effect at the lower temperature. the floor of the kiln at the front is a bit of a dead area, I get a better result by raising the pots up a little, though I did slip a porcelain stem bowl underneath. the southern ice porcelain matures at a lower temp anyway.
at the back the pots on the floor fire well, as long as they are well spaced out. my crazy blue glaze toned itself down a bit this time, probably because there was a little less reduction, so the copper in it stayed green rather than pinky purple.
I had three refires on this top shelf, two were underfired in the cold spot at the front of the kiln in the last firing, the other was just a dull colour with a lot of grey.
this firing has a nice mixture of colours – orange, rust, chocolate with blue bits, a purer, veined blue on the second glazed porcelain piece, and grey green to celadon green.
this bottle was on the top shelf at the front, next to the flue; that’s probably the hottest place. this is the dolomite/tin/copper glaze, fairly thin – a wonderful glowing dapple orange/rust that sometimes happens on the super white stoneware.
the same glaze on porcelain when thinly applied almost disappears, and will turn pink where there’s enough reduction. this has had its second firing; the first left grey patches where the copper was a little thick. more copper burns off this glaze in the second firing and lightens it up.
the new shino I mixed up in January for a liner will come up white when it’s on thick enough, so the indented polka dots catch more glaze and are white. the clay is that “school clay” a buff stoneware, which turns this rich rust under the shino.
this porcelain wash has proved difficult to glaze satisfactorily. it is a cold white, so colour in the glaze tends to be less rich and warm and the surface can be rather uninteresting. it is better when the wash is thin and allows the buff clay underneath to show through. dipping the bottle sideways in the two different dolomite glazes, the green and the blue, gives the shape some help too. I call the vertical overlap a tidepath, referring to the tidemark I make by overlapping horizontally.
the blue dolomite glaze at the right thickness does very good things on the layering of the superwhite stoneware over iron-bearing stoneware. these watering cans came when I was using images of a french collection of old watering cans to make an embroidery for the summer knits. the idea of making spouts with sprinklers was too tempting to resist. I think this is the one with the most presence.
this is the blue glaze behaving itself over porcelain layered with terracotta, and doing what I originally got on my porcelain tile tests; a speckled bird’s egg blue.
working outside, glazing and packing the kiln, has been a pleasure this week; my garden is owned by a thrush, and he has been singing for a week now, starting with a throat clearing, lung stretching series of spluttery croaky noises which developed to full blast jazz song by mid week. sometimes I could hear three, two far off in opposite directions, and “my” thrush low down on the ivy hedge next to the pottery workshop, very loud.
spring has come on a lot since my last post, we have had a good three weeks of mild weather. along the edge of the wood hazel catkins dangle, smudged dashes of pale green against the brown-grey winteriness of the trees, one of the first signs of spring.
crocuses and tiny irises are out in the garden, and all the snowdrops that fringe the wild garden are at their best.
mild weather has made working in the pottery, especially glazing, which I do outside, on the verandah, much more pleasant. on Friday I had another glaze firing, after two weeks of making, and a biscuit firing. now I have plenty of pieces to glaze, at least another kiln-full after this one. I made the pack looser, and applied some of the things I had learnt from my last firing – at the moment the kiln arch has some leaks and the gap made by the bricks on the top of the flue needs to be quite a lot smaller to get the right amount of reduction.
I started reduction a little early – at 1009 C, and kept it strong with real back pressure and a lot of soot for the next 100 degrees, then allowed less reduction, keeping the flame that emerges from the flue quite small and clear. it turns out I could really have had even less, and kept the copper glaze a bit clearer.
a lot of the pots are made with an iron bearing stoneware, or even crank, with a layer of a very white smooth stoneware rolled on top as a layer. the white clay gets marked with stains from the iron bearing one, and it results in an interesting mix, with which the dolomite/tin/ copper glaze works very well, producing oranges, rusts and an almost celadon green, although matt.
the blue version of this glaze has turned out to be quite problematic. I have had greys and blacks from it mostly, except when I use it for a second firing over the barium glaze. however this time the blues are quite bright over the porcelain layered pots. this was due to the fact that I put it on much thinner; in order to do that I did not mix up the whole of the bottom of the bin ( this was still in a solid lump after the big freeze) so possibly the composition was different.
the refiring of the last firing’s disaster was even more of one, the glaze has bubbled so the poor pot has an advanced case of acne. I don’t know why and will have to ask advice on this one.
on the whole a good batch. I am not so happy with 2 more strident blue pots hiding at the back of this group, (one was at the front of the kiln) but the blue is better on this one, as the copper in the glaze has kept a slight greeny tone, instead of the purple of over reduction.
this group of little bottles has turned out nicely, glazes doing different things depending where the pot was on the shelf. centre left is the blue glaze again, but over stoneware clays which tone it down.
the best glaze for my rough white stoneware mixed clay is the crawling shino, and this is probably my favourite pot. its pointy shoulders are working nicely with the double dip down the middle, and the cracked wall echoes the crawling shapes.
I made this pot in the summer; it’s good to have it resolved at last – and the green/orange dolomite glaze is stunning on the iron-bearing stoneware on the inside. I have a web page of photos up here.
a new batch awaits firing in the workshop, mostly only just small enough to fit in the kiln
this is reduction st thomas clay with added grog – there are several made with the rough white mix, and some with black clay, both of which will look good with the crawling shino. probably the st thomas will get the dolomite glaze
and this, which is st thomas with wet porcelain and china clay rolled into it, will be best with the dry matt barium glaze.
after looking again at this firing, I want to have one of these in the stoneware layer, using crank as the base and the fine white stoneware which has molochite grog in it as the top layer. it has been producing some lovely results with the dolomite/tin/copper glazes. so more clay out and some more making this week. at least three more firings to go – much intense forward visualisation at this point.
my exhibition at the Stour Gallery has been on for three weeks now, and I am only just getting around to posting about it. I probably needed a bit of distance before thinking about it again.
the pots are a mixture of quite a range of older dates and the very new just-out-of-the-kiln. in the window a flask from 2007 (most of these went to Japan) and a porcelain bowl made last December and re-glazed in the last firing. this should have gone to Japan, but I discovered that the glaze leaches poisonous barium carbonate in contact with food, so we decided it was better for Mina Perhonen not to have them in their shop, just in case …
I have only two photos from the gallery; it was evening and the lighting made it too difficult, so I can’t really give you a good idea of how it looks, but I am very pleased. the mixture of my pots, which seem very restrained with their rock/nature surfaces and colours, with brightly coloured late 20th C “Modern Master” original prints – Bruce McLean, Albert Irwin, Ceri Richards, Sandra Blow, Terry Frost et al – and a great Maurice Cockerill canvas with thick mauve paint pooled and almost spilling off – and Adrian Frost’s vibrant little abstract paintings, works extremely well, and even better, an arrangement of my pots including some of the grey-blue textured porcelains along a low shelf under a selection of delicate Peter Blake prints in similar blue greys and browns.
this saggar-fired bottle from last September looked particularly good under a big striking McLean print.
it was nice to see some more pieces fired in Gas Kimishima’s 2008 anagama out in the world too, like this quiet scored bottle.
this new porcelain layered piece looked very striking too, some good lighting and the gallery white wall does help!
Sarah asked for a couple of these porcelain stem bowls – I will be interested to see if they sell. they are somewhat different from my usual rugged oeuvre.
the exhibition is on for two months, finishing at the end of August, which I am also pleased about, especially as it’s the only exposure my pots are getting this year.
dry sunny weather in April brings out the flowers, and encourages me into my pot workshop.
the garden is a pleasure, plenty to do, but there’s time, I can spend from a few minutes to half an hour every time I walk up to the shed in the sunshine, birdsong accompanying me. there is a blackbird with a lovely series of tootles and trills who sits on the low hawthorn above the office. I don’t hear the thrush – I think I don’t get up early enough, but I often see them with beakfuls of invertebrates – the nest must be in the hedge somewhere. then there is the greenfinch with his jay-jay-jay- rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr song.
the blackthorn is about two weeks later than last year. I am attacking the hogweed straight away, squirting glycosulphate at close range on the new leaves. I hope I can really get rid of it for good and all this year.
plenty of damson blossom, if it gets fertilised there should be a good crop.
after a week’s work there is quite a good crop of pots. the dry weather means they will be ready for the kiln soon. I made a start by looking at the work of Mo Jupp. he uses sheets of clay to construct small female torsos, and I felt there was something I could learn from his work.
although these are similar to the small flasks and bottles I usually make, their shoulders are constructed differently, with a steeper angle, and made out of two or more sections, also the clay is rolled out thinner and softer. I tried putting wet porcelain on top of the stoneware clay, then covering it with powdered china clay. this gives a lovely soft texture, uneven, powdery and sometimes cracking and flaking off.
I used the terracotta crank as well, and mixed it with the St Thomas stoneware.
most of these pots are “feeding vessels” with the little spout and wider neck. some have a neck which grows smoothly out of the shoulder, on others the neck has a different angle from the shoulder.
one bigger piece, a kind of watering can shape;
and one shaped like a torso, more organic, made of more pieces, the clay soft, the porcelain powdery like flour.
I found the website of the museum of Cycladic art and printed out some images for inspiration. most of the vessels here are Bronze Age, carved from marble.
Tilda and Sal are hors de combat just at the moment; T cut a paw pad last week and has stitches, Sal ate too much lamb fat and has an inflamed pancreas.
So I am walking myself at the moment. on Tuesday I am convinced I saw a Bonelli’s warbler in Cake’s Lane. if this is true I am one up on the twitchers. a little olive grey bird, whitish greyish underparts, smaller than a robin, with no distinguishing stripes or anything special, a small robin type beak. I got very close, as it was perched amongst last year’s dry meadow sweet stalks as I walked by. if I didn’t notice the eye stripe of course it could easily have been a chiff chaff or a willow warbler. perhaps, what ever it was, it seemed stunned after its long journey north.
this evening the sun shone through the wood and illuminated the blackthorn blossom and the new leaves. there is a resident thrush in the wood, he always rewards my walk with a solo improvisation.
there were eight hares out here, cavorting in the low slanting sunshine.
the severe winter doesn’t seem to have had any effect on their numbers.
violets sprinkled on the bank in Clip Street, along with mounds of primroses. it seems like a good year for flowers here too. I must visit the secret wood, its wood anemones must be out by now. I have one flower in my garden; they are hard to establish, and they are a sign of ancient woodland.
and the chickens looking pretty at Clip street farm. another kind of bird made their presence felt – Hercules bombers out for their evening run, flying low and banking overhead, rumbling along like so many giant bumblebees.
paris in early march, colder and brighter than it has been before, gusts of bitter and freezing air, static making hair fly and clothes snap and cling, piercing blue skies and skull numbing black nights.
in contrast the house is warm and welcoming, full of beautiful things magically displayed amid the splendour of Philippe’s latest interiors book, Les Papiers Peints.
there are scraps of wallpaper everywhere, a patchwork of old and new, exquisite and bold.
the high ceilings and tall windows with their iconic views of Paris streets add to the elegance of Akira’s beautiful dresses.
this staircase leads to the “maid’s bedroom” which is where I hang out with my knitwear.
Rosa’s shoe, boot and bag collection against more wonderful wallpapers with an oriental feel.
a green/grey theme, all elegant prettiness
in Donatella Pellini’s jewelbox, an octagonal room with four painted mirrors, the colours are sunny and vibrant. birds painted free-hand fly around.
the jewellery has gone and our showroom has finished; a few days high energy, then the house is left empty – until its next chameleon change of identity.
more of Rosa – beautiful leathers, most desirable shoe and bags, and a very elegant lovely person.
wallpaper seen through glass
the mixture of elegant house, with its ever changing paint and paper, and collections of beautiful decoration for the female form, is an intoxicating one.
dove grey and antique silver, light and reflection.
imperfections all go to make up a sensitive accumulation of impressions, like a painting. the house is an ongoing work of art, always changing, fluid, never finished.
a trip to Amsterdam in three parts; firstly water and boats.
on my first day in the Netherlands I visited Tilberg with S to see the mina perhonen exhibition at the Texteil Museum
which was enchanting and beautiful and inspirational. afterwards we were persuaded to go to the de Pont Museum nearby,
to see the building – an impressive modern gallery, industrial style – and the Bill Viola installation there.
the only part of this collection of videos that we felt impelled to watch for its full time-span was the last one. mysterious pulsating navy blue water filled a deep rectangular screen, the sound-track a beating heart or a wave machine, something mechanical with a driving energy. for minutes altogether lapping shapes emerged and disappeared in the depths; light or bubbles glinted, at the base of the screen something more energetic appeared to be happening, until at last a shocking pale figure laced and bearded with elongated bubbles pierced the image from below with a roar of crashing water.
so, Amsterdam, a city full of water and boats, trees dropping their leaves in the water, coots and ducks and seagulls and a surprising numbers of cars, bicycles and clichés. I walk along the side of one wide canal, admiring boats, and rafts of shaggy wild water plants.
up to the system of waterways curved around the centre of the old city, which I spend the morning exploring.
gold and russet leaves in the water draw my eye as the canal tour buses swirl past.
everywhere I look, pretty seventeenth century waterfront houses, boats, bikes, trees, birds, tourists and water bus wakes. how on earth can one find anything about Amsterdam that isn’t a cliché, while avoiding being run down by a cyclist?
Bill Viola’s video stays with me all morning as I gaze into the murky waters of the canals (clean water is cycled into them every twenty four hours).
an off the street life which is mysterious and inaccessible to the casual tourist.
the cool northern light reflected back by the water.
a small boat emerges from under a bridge, approaches, then turns and zooms away again, a photographer aboard.
some of these barges do tours of home life on a barge. I see locked plastic bio-loos on some quiet canal-side streets, presumably for barge dwellers.
I am told that the canal tour buses are a great way to see Amsterdam.
everywhere you can hear the sad off-key clang of the trams’ warning bell. I don’t get to ride on a tram until I leave in a couple of days.
lee-boards. now there’s a thing. these essentially sailing boat stabilisers for flat bottomed boats only crept into my vocabulary about three weeks ago, and here they are on sailing barges, where they belong, and on this racy looking little motorboat, which seems very strange.
