very slowly, the grey curtain lifts,
geese flying in their majestic ten thousands draw curving lines under a diagonal sheet of soft gunmetal cloud.
the live turquoise slice of sky transmits their far off cries.
cold air pouring down the hill, my boots plodding through the mud in the wood’s shelter.
cloud edged with lavender and coral pink finally slides north and the gap closes.
January work
I have two concerns at the moment; one is getting ordered things that I have made dyed and finished, and the other is making samples for Paris in early March. I am trying madder, one of the plant dyes (from the root of the madder plant, rubia tinctorum); I buy it from Michel Garcia. this source is grown in India, and it is not the extract, but the root ground up into powder. we used it in his workshop at Big Cat Textiles last summer, with tannin and citric acid, all in a one pot process.
I was a bit nervous about dyeing wool items with this much heat – Michel brings it up to to simmer point, very slowly, and then that should be enough, and the dye bath should be a yellowish clear liquid after that point. but what is simmer point on the thermometer? dare I go up to 90C. I hedged and kept it in a lot longer at about 80 the first time. the liquid never went yellowish and clear, but seemed pinkish and slightly cloudy.
the first try was a skirt of wool crepe, which I was okay about sacrificing as it’s not going to be a sample, it was a first go at a skirt. it has had a bundling with one or two leaves in a holm oak dyebath, so it was already greyed down. the colour is extraordinarily rich and the leaves came through nicely, especially this little frond of bracken.
the next candidate was a silk and merino jersey dress hand-stitched in silk.
it is brighter, and more orangey, as silk really does not take madder in the same way as wool, and tends to a light coral. I didn’t cook it for so long, and had the temperature up at 85C more speedily, but the dyebath liquid still didn’t become transparent yellow. I will have to be a bit rasher with these dyebaths; anyway, the result is still very intense. this also had been bundled first with two oak leaves and a piece of bracken.
these marks and leaf prints are much less definite on the silky merino after dyeing with madder, but they give it a soft painterly quality.
next I fed my indigo vat with the exhausted madder dyebath. this was one of the indigo vat methods shown us by Michel. my vat absolutely lapped it up and immediately produced big blue bubbles – as the idea of giving it the madder (or henna, or fructose) is to de-oxygenate, or reduce it, seeing bubbles of oxygen come out is very good news.
a couple of days later, having warmed it up over night I woke it up with a couple of ladlefuls of builder’s lime, and it looked even more cheerful
I had a big dyeing session, luckily the weather was quite warm for january, with a strong wind, the best conditions I could hope for, for rinsing and drying outside.
eight shibori tied objects (sweaters and silk dresses).
in fact I started with the cotton apron on the right. it’s one of my selection of kitchen aprons and I fancied a change from pale eau de nil to bright blue. starting with something readymade and cotton helps to get started and to lower the ph for the silk and cashmere to follow. the alkalinity was about 10 when I started. it drops as you use the vat. the two dresses next to it look ever so dark. I dipped twice this time, to improve fastness and cover, and my vat is too strong to get the really pale blues. I should do many dips in an exhausted vat for that.
however, after the vinegar rinse, a wash in the machine with ph balanced liquid, and many many rinses in the bath this morning, wet the blue is less strong
and dry about where I need it.
wet detail shows how the vintage kimono silks take the indigo, with varying degrees of depth depending on what they have been printed with.
now to untie all my treebark shiboris, after steaming them.
more washing and rinsing. these cashmeres went in last, after I had got the vat temperature up to forty centigrade. they are quite pale after two dips – either the temperature was not high enough, or the reduction was starting to fail.
anyway, I gave the vat another feed of exhausted madder and left it to sleep.
in just under 2 weeks I have an exhibition of pots in the Bircham Gallery in Holt, together with photos by the gallery owner, Chris Harrison. a great opportunity to put the wood-fired pieces out into the world. however we selected some slightly older pieces, and some “back catalogue” ones as well,
like this huge flask vessel from 2007. after my first experience of woodfiring with Nic Collins, and particularly of placing pots on their backs or sides on wads, that’s how I fired this one, in my gas kiln. it was too tall for the kiln standing up. I also placed some little containers of salt near it, something which I had seen Nic do.
this was fired in a makeshift saggar also in my gas kiln, with hardwood shavings. I tried it three times and the best results came from this firing. there are two other pieces, both of which reflect the changes in my work due to firing with Nic, and with Gas Kimishima, when I spent two weeks camping and firing for ten days in a wood near Tring.
now I have got such good results on Nic’s woodfiring workshop, I will continue to take part – it is a unique opportunity for me to wood fire in a group situation, with all Nic’s expertise available, something I could never do at home.
whether covered in the ambient ash and cinder melt
or red clay glazed with shino
or further back in the kiln with only flame marks and wonderful toasty clay colours
my pots really love this sort of firing.
in contrast, there will be a big group of gas-fired pieces in this chun glaze with the crawling slip and iron oxide under it.
the jewel-like chun glaze rolling off and dribbling over the naked clay has the same kind of feel as the wood fired pieces, but the light colouring, refracting and reflecting light, makes them at the same time quite different.
clay, pots, trees, ash, leaves, light, refracted blue …..
I hope to see a few people who like my pots, at the Bircham Gallery on Saturday 17th January!
on Christmas Eve we drove up the east coast, over the Tay bridge, through Dundee and past Arbroath to Lunan Bay.
at one end are rocky cliffs with caves and interesting rocks
my photo and the low orange sunlight have changed the colour, but actually they looked almost as green as malachite, and I found a green pebble on the beach.
we found several beautiful almost egg-shaped quartz and schist pebbles – black with cream spots, translucent pale pink and white, black and brown flecked with mica.
the middle of the bay has big sand dunes, full of little banded snails which match the stripes on their shells to the narrow marram grass leaves.
at the other end is a red sandstone cliff with a red sandstone castle, or fort, overlooking the river, Lunan Water, which winds through reed beds and sandbanks behind more dunes and a little wood.
where fresh and salt meet the beach wrack is decorated with seaweed and reeds. this log just made me think of a beached sea-stag with prayer threads and papers attached.
and we found several of these magician’s cups, or earth ball fungi in the grass.
a particularly restful place.
but busy in the summer, with a cafe and campsite.
although in St Andrews and environs there was no snow, I did get my boots into a little bit this christmas
we made an expedition to Benarty Hill, an outpost of the Lomond Hills, which you can see standing up in a very monolithic way from the flatter lowlands driving down the M90 from Perth, or on my way home, on the way to the Forth Road bridge, in my case.
a steep walk up from the road, and I am not hill fit
but rewarded by the most wonderful views, 360 degrees around
once we got up there. the paths were frozen solid and slippery, and the wind enough to slice your ears off.
the Ochills visible between
far away into the Cairngorms
Loch Leven below (where Mary Queen of Scots was at first kept, on the island)
and the Firth of Forth and most of Fife spread out. the exertion, the sunshine, the piercing air and the vertiginous views brought on wobbly knees and a dizzy feeling. tremendous, Scotland!
Jane Wheeler
This is my blog filled with things I find interesting and want to share.
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