since  that Aprille with his shoures soote/The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote, we have no shortage of water here, in over-flowing water butts and in the ground, although hosepipe bans are still in place, and the ponds still look a little low.

plant life seems to be happy with the rain, although the storm on Sunday knocked buds and new leaves off. migratory birds are back, but the weather subdues them … I hear blackcaps and garden warblers in all the woods (today a black cap perched and performed right in front of me in the green lane) and in the gardens around my house, yesterday I heard whitethroats in the hedges, and last week there was a willow warbler singing in the fringes of Bale wood … I hope he stays. the chiffchaffs have been present since the end of March.

yesterday we made the annual pilgrimage to Bullfer grove to photograph the bluebells

they grow all over the banks of the bridlepath and the hedgerows surrounding the wood, so I assume it is a place where there has been an ancient continuity of woodland. there are wild garlic clumps amongst the oaks at the northern end, but it is the beech trees that encourage bluebells, as they generally keep the woodland floor clear of undergrowth.

a lovely purple-blue mist which photographs rarely do justice to – and a sweet scent, despite the rapeseed fields quite close with their sickly-sweet shit smell.

the heavy rain and wind may have flattened their leaves but the flowers still stand straight and look as if they have another week or so of flowering.

the orchid I noticed last year is still there – two plants – is that more than last year? I must check last year’s blog.

back in the workshop, door open to the sunshine yesterday – not today in the rain and wind – I have been working on new things, and new old. six years ago I made three of these islamic ewer shapes with a four part base and a square foot, and I sold them almost immediately. after that I went on to making three part bases, and finally spherical bases made with press-moulds, but I never felt any of these were as successful as the originals. they are not easy to make – the neck/spout has to be light, or the base collapses; after a few false starts I have a strategy worked out and have five ready for bisque. the two oval dishes are made from the same template as the big new shaped bottles, and are a further development of the circular ones I made in january and february.

then little beakers, which I want for Hatfield. the dark grey clay is a sculptural clay full of molochite grog sold as pizza oven clay. it is okay as long as it hasn’t lost a critical amount of moisture; yesterday I had to wet it repeatedly with a sponge as it dried too quickly … clay doesn’t like that sort of treatment, so the pieces I made were much more cracked than sunday’s efforts. I have studded it with broken up dried porcelain, rolled into the slab.

Dameon Lynn kindly brought me some clay his neighbouring farmer had dug up – it’s fenland clay – riverine – all black with anaerobic life and smelly – black mud just like the saltmarsh, so I am trying it as a slip.

over the off-white stoneware clay …

I brushed it on with a big chinese brush and scratched lines through it. it will be interesting to see how it works out. it fires pale orange at 1000 C; that will darken at stoneware temperature. I will put it on some bits and pieces for glaze tests.

yesterday I was very optimistic and put in four rows of carrot seed, also some more salad greens

I am eating the thinnings of the first lot of salad sowing, in the mini-poly-tunnel. I have another polytunnel for the second lot – partly to discourage the rabbits – I have seen young rabbits in my garden a couple of times …..

here is a bed of love in the mist and cornflowers and a few wildflower annuals

the beauty of bath has all its blossom out, but there are very few insects to pollinate it. yesterday I saw a comma and an orange tip – this time last year orange tips were everywhere, and the jack-in-the-hedge they love had been up tall and flowering for weeks … this year it is not at that stage yet.

five or six pieces from this firing are for the hammer …. but if you don’t try new things life gets very boring.

this is very sad. I think it must be that I used different glazes inside and outside it; it cracked while it was cooling.

the firing was pretty smoky for the first half of reduction, then clearer and very slow through the 1200′s, culminating with a half hour soak reducing with a  flame at the flue outlet, the pyrometer reading 1252 C, and the last cone, eleven, one third over as you can see. the kiln fires pretty unevenly, so the slower, and the more soak the better. it took from 10.30 at night to 6 pm the following day. the shino benefits from this slow firing, though this time you wouldn’t know it – I put it on porcelain surfaces, which are never very exciting with this glaze.

I had three new glazes, and the Rhodes crackle slip, which I have always meant to try and never got around to – Anne Mette Hjortshøj uses one, so I was inspired to try it at last. my opaque glazes will not show much of a slip, so I found two interesting glazes to try from the late Emanuel Cooper’s book, the Potter’s Book of Glaze Recipes – 309 delicate chun glaze, and 331 white opaque matt glaze, which is “semi-transparent, matt, opaque” in reduction, bit of a contradiction in terms but ..

first mistake was overlapping either of these glazes with my dolomite coloured glazes – here the cobalt running into the chun is not nice at all. the other new glaze was bought specially as a liner, a commercially mixed oil spot – I was feeling lazy. serve me right – that’s probably what cracked the black bottle.

this is the crackle slip on a scored small bottle in a buff clay, based on st thomas, with the chun over it. chun runs like hell and you need to have a foot which will trap it to some extent – unlike this one.

this beaker has a foot that can catch the big globules. one has run over, but it contained itself, didn’t stick to the shelf and break off. on the porcelain layer the beautiful delicate blue of the chun where air bubbles are trapped in it is shown best. the upper part and the inside have the crackle slip under the glaze, and bless me if this pot isn’t waterproof! it looks like the last piece you would expect it of. pots number fifteen and sixteen on the web page have the chun over the crackle slip and it has worked well there too.

here the crackle slip has really gone overboard and started peeling off under the fluid chun type glaze. interesting, I think the peeling off is because this was one of the pieces I made with the pink grogged stoneware with some china clay powder on it. the powder has repelled the slip and the glaze. I like the texture though, I think it works.

here a similar thing has happened with the crawling shino, but as it has flaked off this is a reject. this clay with the powder is best with the very dry barium glaze.

the other big black pot with the poured shino is fantastic, I am just holding my breath that it doesn’t crack – a friend had one piece made in this clay that cracked after he had sold it. I have to acknowledge a debt to Lisa Hammond here, I have her card of three teabowls made in black clay with beautifully poured and dribbled shino glaze. it’s not as easy as it looks ….

I have a big tub of this black matt glaze for porcelain now and can start using it more. it needs to be in a cool part of the kiln, this was on the floor at the back.

the copper red on this piece was a total accident. it has the crackle slip, glazed with Emanuel Cooper 331, which has barium 11%, dolomite 9% – it was placed close to the bright blue saltwater rectangular brush holder, and this bottle has a swollen belly, which received the copper vapour from the blue glaze where it was closest. it’s interesting that it doesn’t absorb the copper unless it’s really close; my lovely magnesium crawling glaze is hopeless if there’s copper in the kiln, it goes pale and not so pale pink all over.

it is a nice glaze with a satiny matt finish over porcelain as here over porcelain layer. for the next firing I will try this combination on bigger pots.

the rest of the pots are here

except for those awaiting destruction ….

close-up the salt-marsh looks very bleached out after the dry winter; in the low dunes of the path there are budding pink thrift flowers, but all else is waiting for warmer weather. the light on a day of misty grey cloud shifting to open blue gaps is entrancing.

rusty colours everywhere – underfoot

a rust coloured rope

orange coloured marsh grass bright against the purple-grey mud at low tide.

water reflecting the sombre light

hoof-prints of a huge red deer that has been wandering about on the marsh – maybe they like to eat seaweed …..

the dunes on the point light up pale and misty as the clouds shift

the brent geese graze on the marsh and fly in and out of the sunlight

high tides have left reflective pools

fingers of salt water explore the sedges and succulents

a smooth green shape turned upside down amongst the marram and wormwood reminds me of celadon glazed chinese porcelain

when the sun pierces the cloud it glitters on the water

the river Stiffkey is very short of water this spring. this is two hours before low tide.

sand, mud, pebbles, sunlight, cloud, saltwater, freshwater, all mingle and make an inspiring day to help me think about the next batch of pots.

last weekend I went to see Anne Mette Hjortshøj’s exhibition of pots at the Goldmark gallery. she is a true inspiration. I met her five years ago at Nic Collins’ “six of the best” celebratory event for woodfirers – she, like me, was helping out – but I didn’t see her work. in the last five years she has become a potter to rival any of the others at Goldmark. her wood fired and saltglazed pots speak of light, I suppose a northern light, sometimes cool, sometimes warm

and an island perched in the Baltic between Sweden and Denmark, Bornholm, where the sea is a strong influence over the land.

the translucent quality of her pale surfaces is produced by brushing on a white slip over a dark clay, and then using ash glazes and the salt process over the top. I find her work really uplifting … and I have to find an excuse to visit Bornholm.

all is explained in this wonderful documentary video which Goldmark have made …..

you can see her pots at the Goldmark Gallery

the daffodils are out, the primroses line the lanes, the blackthorn is white in all the hedges, but it’s really been feeling quite wintery.

the blackthorn in my garden has been quite slow, one bush is just out. the japonica has been in flower all week.

the beauty of bath apple tree has buds swelling into pale green pompoms and studding its branches. this needs drawing, for next spring’s knit collection, but it’s been too cold to stand out there for long. soon I will have to start growing vegetables in the new beds.

the wild daffodils are nicely out in the wildflower garden, and cowslips are beginning to stand up and be counted. today I sowed woodland wildflower seeds under the trees, and reseeded grass and wildflowers, old meadow mixture, where the grass has been dug up. under the apple trees I planted four plum-coloured baby hellebores.

I have been making big pots with the black clay, undiluted this time. there is a risk of dunting (cracking after firing) but I am fairly confident of success. if I glaze inside and outside, and stand them in sand, I shouldn’t have a problem.

these two are enormous, the one on the left will have to be bisque fired on it’s side, and I will go a little higher than usual to try to get them to shrink a bit.

this is a new shape. the main body is made of two tapered pieces, in order to get the tapered shape, larger at the top.

the next bisque firing will be just a few large pots.

twirling it round with the spike to make the horizontal lines is enjoyable, the final touch.

I am making one of these a day, which allows the clay to mature enough to work with. I don’t need to heat the workshop for this, and I can get on with other tasks, gardening, and drawing.

Sal on a Norfolk beach 2008, aged 12. handsome sandy boy.

2005, being very patient with baby Tilda, who is biting his ear.

“In the big sheep meadow Sal plays in the snow, shoving his nose into it, eating it and leaping about, you wouldn’t think he is fourteen this year.”

I wrote this two years ago, and this winter was optimistic about having another year, but it was not to be, Sal suffered a stroke on the last day of February, and did not recover. he was helped out of this world two days later. only two days before his stroke he was cavorting about and happily walking out for an hour.

we first met in a park in Newcastle when I was looking after a dog called Raider whose family had taken Lucy to Umbria. a shaggy dishevelled creature appeared to have no owner, and I lured him back to the house with kind words. unfortunately Raider didn’t share my attitude, so I took him to the police the next day. when Lucy returned we went to the pound and reclaimed him. he was only six months old, and cried when the pound handler abandoned him to strangers.

he was very thin and very nervous, barking at strangers in the house and out in the park. in fact he was a bit of a menace with people, jumping up at them and barking.

his german shepherd heritage was very obvious, but what about the rest? his neat paws and light bones, and speed made me think whippet.

the new bed, his own bed, his own bone, his collar, his house, his people were all very important to him. he would not be left out, and virtually screamed if his pack was split up. we took him to obedience class and he was angelic, apart from being too vocal, as long as some other dog didn’t have a squeaky toy. in more advanced classes he learnt so quickly; I really should have done some agility with him, he would have been amazing.

after some setbacks with kennel cough, and then his “op”  he started to grow up into a very handsome dog, and being walked with a group by the dog-walker helped him calm down.

he was very serious about food, and about the tennis balls which we kicked all over the park for him. but he was always car sick, especially after the beach trips when he would bring up buckets of sand, picked up with the tennis ball …..

we tried children’s cough mixture. that just made him drool, poor chap. eventually a really long trip cured him.

but the beach was such fun, it was always worth it. the back of my car got a little stinky …

and there was always someone who would throw the ball into the sea just to see poor Sal get wet.

he filled out, and got his confidence. the poor postman had his bag bitten but he was friends with the parcel force guy.

then we moved to the country, back to Norfolk. he seemed a bit bored without his dog walking friends so we got Sooz from whippet rescue.

then a very lively and cheeky Tilda

she loved him, but she bossed him completely, specialising in ambush, and when she was grown never allowing him a bone or a toy unless she was kept away by force.

but on the whole, putting up with a puppy at the age of nine gave him a new lease of life.

now we remember him on our  walks, an invisible presence. when I get up in the morning there’s no Sal desperate to get out to the garden, then to come in and get his hug, and his morning warm drink … but he had a very good life, and will always be with me, in my head.

because the barium glaze was frozen I thought it a good idea to put two more of the black scored shouldered bottles in with no glaze. but I was disappointed to find that the mix of black and buff clays didn’t fire black as I expected (due to others’ advice). I am buying some more of the black clay and will make another batch in unadulterated black.

the blue glaze worked really well, whether it was this pale version, over porcelain layering

or on the buff clay as almost black

or on the powdery texture of china clay on porcelain layer.

and in the bottom front of the kiln the green glaze went black on the porcelain layer, most unexpected in this context, though I have had black before when it’s been glazed thickly, here that was not the case as it is rusty orange over the buff “school clay”.

the green glaze was mostly very pale and delicate on the porcelain; I am not sure if this was due to glazing more thinly than before, or something to do with the firing, possibly slightly less reduction.

rich blues and oranges

this is one of my favourites; the blue breaking to brown is very subtle.

and this one has the spiral imprint of a millipede – they get into the workshop, die, and turn up in unexpected places. the china clay powder on the porcelain has worked well again with this glaze.

a slightly flamboyant little pot, the contrast of the porcelain with the buff clay, and the way the porcelain layer cracks open as it shrinks more than the base layer …

funny polka dots linked by cracks in the porcelain …

this new shape is not so easy to carry off – it looks great in the photos, but one of the seams opened up in the firing.

even though the green is paler than I expected, I think it rather suits these pieces, and the freckling is lovely.

here the copper is trying to change to copper red … only on one side of the pot.

and again this black has arrived … I think it looks great!

you can see the rest of the pots here

now I go back to making more pots again, and I have ordered some new clays to try out.

the garden and the pottery workshop under february snow after the firing; an opportunity to photograph birds from the kitchen window

a dunnock fossicking about under the peanut feeder for crumbs

a great tit

and a marsh tit; there is a pair of these nearby and they love peanuts.

the coal tit is very similar but close-up you can see he has a wide black beard rather than the marsh tit’s little goatee.

and his black cap splits in half at the back of his head.

I left the kiln two days to cool after last August’s disaster when I opened too early and one big piece cracked. everything looks fine. cone 10 went right over; cone 11 just starting to go … perfect.

you can see the soot from the reduction; some people think I am over-reducing to get this smoke and black on the bricks, but it is during the early stages of reduction, between 1050 and 1150 C. then I cut down the strength of the reduction and I get these great oranges, greens and blues from my dolomite/tin oxide glaze.

the top centre piece has porcelain on the lower half, producing the grey blue, and the base clay is the “school” stoneware, a light buff – the blue glaze is almost black on this. next to it is my mixed basically st thomas body, with porcelain over it, and the copper version of the dolomite/tin glaze, with greens and oranges.

looking in, the top shelf at the back has worked really well.

close-ups of those smaller pieces.

no breakages – I put the black clay on sand now, a tip from Sarah Purvey, so that it can’t stick to the shelf and crack as it cools.

this porcelain piece on the left has the black version of the dolomite/tin glaze; interestingly the other two pieces I glazed with this have come out a dull matt freckled green .. maybe more – or less – reduction ….. will have to think about that.

the two black clay pieces. actually I mixed it half and half with a buff stoneware; glazed with the barium carbonate glaze it stays almost the same colour as it is after the bisque firing … you can see that the unglazed bit at the bottom of the left hand one is black though. a thinner coat of glaze will give a blacker result – next time … I have a few more of these waiting to be glazed.

the bottom of the back of the kiln looks great too – top and bottom has some good examples of the blue version of the dolomite/tin glaze.

the porcelain glaze which I expected to be black has gone matt khaki – that’s fine though,

close-up of those blues – quite intense.

and one pot photographed to look its best – then the camera’s batteries went in the cold. it’s only just above freezing.

postscript – the rest of the pots can be seen here

january sunshine; the roof of the wood is a lattice of branches letting the blue sky in. the beech tree’s naked trunk twists and turns like a mature-bodied dryad, in the centre of its glade, floored with copper leaves

here the wood is thicker and still makes a dark shade contrasting its boundary with the open field.

the wood is dry and crackling with leaves underfoot. no signs of primrose or violet yet, although the woodpecker’s drumming rings through the trees on these sunny days and the great tit has begun his repetitive two tone song.

clumps of elm trees have died and collapsed; until the inevitable clones spring up from the roots the wood is opened up to daylight and brambles are spreading; there is less cover for the roe deer and I rarely see them. today a hare got up and ran out of the trees as we walked through, noisily cracking dead twigs and making our clumsy way, no doubt spreading alarm amongst the inhabitants.

in my garden the snowdrops are out, and the celandines. the first promise of life this year.

continuing to make pieces with plant impressions; this is clematis harvested from the tangle of dead stuff round the pillars of the verandah.

the first biscuit firing done, and now a glaze firing to prepare for the first day of february.

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.

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!