Distracted decorating

I eventually managed to get the last of the salad bowls decorated on Wednesday. It was difficult to focus, as my mind was rather more in Glasgow with Rodger. I had hoped to do some new designs but I wasn't feeling in a creative enough space so in the end I did some variations on old themes. My Father had come over the afternoon before and was a there with supper ready when I got home from Glasgow. He spent Wednesday morning sitting in the workshop with me doing his tapestry to keep me company. His presence was very calming and stopped me jumping up and down checking my mobile phone for possible messages from the hospital!
Fox and foxgloves in a different layout and one with the chasing cats.
Today it was mugs and jugs, which needed handles on and then slip decorating. Thank goodness for my tried and tested 'Sheep on Criffel' design - easy to do as I have made so many of them, and they need no extra concentration.
I should get them finished off tomorrow and then I will go back up to Glasgow. Inigo is going to keep the showroom open for limited hours. He had a trial run on Tuesday and although he had a few people through he didn't sell anything. I think he was quite disappointed not to get a go at wrapping up a giant seat or some such exotic object!

At the weekend Oskar came up and we had the the most delightful walk out to Rough Island over the causeway. What a great day for Rodger's last bit of 'freedom'!

The Hard Rock & a rocky time ahead.

The Hard Rock prizes went down really well. We watched the event at the weekend and here is my stalwart helper Allie on the ride and the run, coming in as first local woman! I cycled in this event last year but I did start to get a bit worried about injuries - and the more I worried the more I fell off. I now wear a ridiculous amount of body armour and don't look anything like as cool as Allie, but as a self emplyed potter with no personal insurance I reckon I just have to put up with looking like a medieval knight. As a child I always wanted to be one anyway so nothing has changed there.

I had a large throwing session, I didn't mean to make quite so much but the clay was JUST right and I got rather carried away. I have been meaning to throw some salad bowls for ages as I've had none in the showroom all summer.
I'd also run out of tri-vases, (great for people who can't arrange flowers very well, like me). Sometimes they are horrendous to throw but the clay being just perfect makes so much difference.At the same time I'm half way through a group of extruded dishes. I had a go at bending a dish sideways as it was being extruded. It was a bit tricky because the pugmill is so close to the wall, one side was easier than the other. But I do like the effect and I think it has potential.
In between all this making Allie unpacked the big kiln of bisc, but now there is no room anywhere for anything. I will have to finish off the decorating before we can glaze anyway so maybe we should have just left it all in the kiln... but then we have traffic jam problems, (and I have a pretty big workshop)! All the shelves and all the tables are covered and the day seems to have been spent moving things around.

I usually try to keep this blog pretty much to pottery related topics, but the truth is I am in a bit of a panic, trying to get so much made before Rodger's bone marrow transplant. He is going in to hosptial next Tuesday and will be there for a month or longer depending on how it goes. I will be taking the next few weeks off and staying in Glasgow where possible. I do anticipate a pretty difficult few months ahead, with juggling care and keeping home and work ticking over so I probably won't be posting too much, though Rodger has plans to write a transplant blog. ..if he is up to it. Watch this space!

Cat's in the dog house (and dog's away)

Some of the results from the last kiln. Of course I always see where things could have been better, but I was pleased with the life in these ducks.








The lines of the underwater swimmer and dog worked pretty well, though I could have done with maybe a little contrast in the slip colour where the underwater shapes are- lighter or darker perhaps.




I finished a few commissions - two pasta dishes featuring a particular pair of cats.....Not exactly Mungojerry and Rumpleteaser but I must have had T S Eliot in the back of my mind.


Also out of the kiln were the prizes for the 'Hard Rock Challenge' this weekend. (Cycling, and running duathlon). When I went through them to check that all was present and correct, to my horror I noticed that in the Junior category, one was inscribed '4th'.
ER, I wasn't asked to make any 4th prizes, was I? Aaargh, somehow as I was counting, 'four 1sts', (done,tick), four 2nds', (done,tick), all fine - but when it came to the fourth 3rd, I must have written FOURTH on it!
What to do? Well, low temperature enamel has saved the day, enough at least in the short term for some poor child not to be very offended on Saturday!
A difficult birth plate - Ruby, Lilies and Poppies round the edge. How to be inspired by the motif of a ruby? I struggled with this one, but at least the ruby has achieved a sort of glow.
Meet 'Extra', who is now in the dog house. Some poor customers spent nearly 40 minutes choosing a wedding present last Saturday. I wrapped it up and we were just chatting as they were about to leave, when who should come jumping up onto the counter to say hello.
Crash! I was mortified and most embarrassed and they were bitterly disappointed. Did I have another one just the same....? No such luck. She loves to say hello to customers, and has never broken anything before. I will certainly never balance pots on the counter again when she is around!

More dishes and a treat for the kiln

It's been a while since I wrote a post. Lots has been going on, but I have been pushed for time and in particular computer time. We have been sharing internet time with our son who moved back home this summer, and suddenly getting on line has been rather more complicated. A wireless router is on its way so that should help matters.
I had a go with the new dish die. It worked a treat, no tearing, but perfect edges. Whether it was the nice new slicing blades in the pugmill, that the clay was just a perfect contstituency, or that the die was designed with skillful perfection, I don't know. I am inclined to believe it was the latter!


I needed to make another hollow handle extrusion with a narrower bore. I was still using my first hollow die, which was pretty clumsily made.

Rodger has been mending the roof of the kiln. It has always been cooler at the top, but lately it has been getting ridiculous, anything higher than half way up was invariably underfired. I had made a whole load of ceramic buttons with the idea that he would line the underside of the roof with ceramic fibre. After cutting away the rusty metal sheeting and shovelling out the pathetic amount of insulation chips there was plenty of room to fill in the space above the arch with fibre - a much easier solution.



It was a typical Rodger solution to use the old toaster to hold the bung bricks together. (It goes with the hotpoint spray booth)! A new lease of life to our 30 year old kiln. The next glaze which will be the test but it certainly looks happier.

More long dishes underway

This week I've been working on some more long dishes. I have an 'important' commission for one which I really want to make a good job of. I was too greedy in my first attempt and REALLY DID make it too long, so that even on a slanted kiln shelf it spilled over the end and warped rather horribly. With the second take I changed the design a little but then I wasn't altogether happy with the finished colours. I know that I am being very self critical and I can still sell it, but I want it to be perfect! Surely one of these might be the perfect wiggly.

Now when people view the finished pot I know it is easy to think, 'Nice pot', end of thought. It has just arrived in front of their eyes as if it always has been. Nothing about it, if it is a good one, betrays the struggles which may have happened during its creation. Allie commented, when she saw the finished seat which she had helped me extrude and lift and turn with all the accompanying sweat and tears, how it was hard to even remember the effort involved in all the processes which brought it to life.

So today, when I spent the whole morning struggling to get a design to sit comfortably on a long wiggly dish, I took a shot of all the rubbings out on the way!
I'll finish the slip colours off on this one tommorrow. I am wanting the bottom half of the dog and the swimmer to look as though they are under the water. I have in mind an early manuscript painting of Noah's flood where the drowned people under the waves are just an outline. I'll try for this with some inlaid lines of slip.
.....and meanwhile I am getting through those awkward commssions. The famous 'thistle clock' now drying out.
....and a simple wedding plate. I got a fright with this one. I was on the phone to say it was ready, convinced that it was needed for Wednesday 26th. I had read the date upside down. When I was told that the wedding wasn't until the 29th I felt sick. However that is exactly what I HAD inscibed. Phew!

Bits and Bobs

It's been a pretty busy few weeks since Potfest. There has been a lot of other stuff to sort out, such as various illness within the family, which has taken a lot of time and energy. I did manage to rush the Army Windsurfing prizes order through and got it boxed up and off at the end of last week. It was a case of fast drying, both outside in the sun and then in the kilns as they cooled from the last unpack.
I've since been catching up on those little individual orders, one or two which are long overdue. Such things as house name plaques, a 'thistle clock' (!), a birth plate. The sort of orders that take an inordinate amount of time, each needing individual thought, special colours, motifs, scripts etc and I rarely actually charge enough for them.

I still have a seat half constructed under wraps, which I had to abandon as ceramic shows, orders and summer visitors took over. I'll get back to it soon I HOPE. I sold my snake seat to a someone who saw it at the Park and it left on Monday. I was rather sad to say goodbye to it. It had been well stroked and sat upon and I forgot that it was actually for sale.

I had a nice visit from John Stroomer the other Sunday, who called in with a student friend to have a look at the 'extruders'. Like Jim he seemed a little surprised at my tiny pugmill. I think he expected a Monster machine. Perhaps my half horse power model is a little slow but it still does the job. This afternoon I cut a new die, so perhaps tomorrow I will try it out, though I should really finish the thistle clock first.....

Dogs in the Park

Here are some images from 'Potfest in the Park'. I completely forgot to take any so they were all taken by Rodger who thankfully was a bit more with it than I was! The dog seat was the Potfest 'competition' piece, the theme was 'Cultural Connections -Building bridges'. I went through several ideas for a suitable title ranging from 'Bridging the Yap, to 'Canine Connections', but so many people asked, 'Surely you can't SIT on that, will it be STRONG enough'?- that I ended up simply calling it 'SIT!' Rodger caught a shot of someone, namely John Stroomer, doing just that.



The design for the top was based on the building bridges theme, certainly the dogs in question would disrupt the proceedings if they failed to obey the 'sit' command....My 'huge' piece looked so much smaller when it was out in the open. I made the mistake of constructing it at table height, and it wasn't really until it was biscuit fired and I put it on the ground, that I realised that the dogs were much more hidden and slightly 'squashed' by the top than I had anticipated. Next time I will be careful to keep looking at the piece as it will eventually be seen. It is all part of the endless learning.

What a lot of work packing pots is though. Three seats came with us to Potfest and we had to use the caravan as a trailer for both them and the display boards.'Someone' discovered that seats wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags made a pretty cosy nest for cat napping. We were loaded and ready to go, had said goodbye to Allie, when Rodger suddenly remembered something he wanted to check somethng in the caravan. Lucky he did, otherwise we would have had quite a shock to find Timbalada helping us out at Potfest!



It was a really enjoyable show, and it was great to meet so many nice potters and see such a variety of excellent work. It was lovely to meet Margaret Brampton with her very beautiful and delicately painted slipware, it is so interesting when you feel you know someone's work through their blog to see it for real!

Chris Lewis brought some of his wonderful stoneware garden seats of a scale I could only dream of! Quite an inspiration though he does have a walk in kiln which he said he fires only twice a year. I don't think that I could handle that!

Unbelievably I did sell all those mountain bike mugs, so all that frantic work over the last three weeks paid off. I sold two of the bigger pieces, which was great, and got some very nice feedback which makes it all worthwhile. Certainly enough to give me confidence to keep going with them.

It has taken the rest of the week to unpack, put the showroom to rights and generally catch up on all the other stuff that has been piling up. I would love to say that I was able to take a few days off, but I have the Army Windsurfing Prizes order deadline looming. Better press on with that!

Getting ready for Potfest

Its been a pretty non stop few weeks. I've been making like mad trying to catch up and get ahead for 'Potfest in the Park' this weekend. I don't quite know how I've done it, though some of this work was fast dried both outside and by rush packing into still- warm kilns. Last weekend was a mega slip decorating session. Here are some of the finished results, unpacked and ready to box up.

I had to get a batch of mountain bike mugs made - Potfest is on the edge of the Lake District after all and there may well be lots of bikish people there who will NEED one, (though they don't know that yet)!

Drying tiles outside in between the showers.
Spoons, spoons. The small oval dishes have spooons which go with them. These are bisc fired and being glazed. Small things are so FIDDLY!
....and in between, or rather as well, I had to fit in a deadline commission wedding plate. It is coming out of the kiln tomorrow, so fingers crossed as it took most of Saturday to glaze paint.

The big seat with the dogs is also coming out tomorrow. Talk about last minute!

A worried dog heads for the kiln

We got the dog seat into the kiln today. It took THREE of us. Rodger and I lifted it onto the trolley with the brown paper on top, by sliding it round on its own board to get our hands underneath. Allie held the board steady to stop it twisting round with it. Once on the trolley it was fairly straight forward to slide it into the kiln with the sand on the kiln shelf, one at either side and Allie pushing from behind. It was a bit tight with the door only just closing, but I prefer to say a perfect fit. In fact taking shrinkage into account it was precision mathematics actually. The dog looked a bit worried about his fate, but as long as I remembered to vent all the sections it should be alright. I just hope that where the seat overhangs his head it doesn't warp. Maybe I should have built in another support for the firing?
But what does SHE care?

I had the most lovely letter of appreciation from someone who bought some pieces at 'Earth and Fire'. It is rare to receive such a thing. I remember reading in Mary Wondrauch's book on slipware how she had a thin folder for them which she treasured. I shall treasure this one.

Unfortunately I also had a worrying correspondence from someone who had bought a mug which she described as 'sweating'on the base when she used it for tea. This was most alarming as I have used, and others have used, my mugs happily for years without any problems. I have pretty confidently narrowed it down to a small batch which was thrown from my red body but had traces of the Valentines black in it from the previous pug. I only noticed this when they were bisc fired and much darker. I shall be careful another time if I have used the pugmill for a different clay first, but if anyone out there has this problem let me know.

Earth and Fire

Here are a few images from the weekend at 'Earth and Fire'. It didn't rain at all, apparently a rare event. In fact it was delightful to be outside for the three warm gentle summer days. As my first time exhibiting here I didn't really know what to expect - I had never even managed to travel down to visit it before. The venue was stunning with a very different feel depending on which area you were in. I was in the 'turning circle' which was spacious and relaxing, while the stalls within the old abbey quiet and contemplative and in the courtyard where everone was closer together it had a bustling market feel.

The two ceramic seats I took were very useful. The snake one was well stroked and after a bit of encouragement, ('Yes of course it's strong enough to sit on'), sat upon. The nearest I came to possibly selling one was to a woman who seemingly couldn't decide which, then ended up saying she would see what next year's were like. She's being hopeful!


It was really good to meet so many lovely people and put faces to some potters whose work I have seen but never met. At last I met Anna Lambert, she and her family were camping next to us. I have admired her work for many years and I knew that she arrived at Corsham, (Bath Academy of Art), as I left but had never met her.

There were in fact so many nice potters, as well as some very nice pot-lovers. I haven't talked so much for ages.

We got back home in the early hours of Monday morning. It took yesterday to unpack and generally flop but re-energised after a good night's sleep I spent the day throwing, I have a lot of MUGS to make for Potfest. I didn't take enough to E and F as I had really wanted to show the new bigger pieces, but the ones I did take vanished. One of the bigger pieces I did sell was the black upright wave, or 'Harbour wall' as I nick named it. I was surprised, as it is probably the first truly non functional piece I have made. When I made that comment to Liz Robison she said that it was useful, 'it was useful to look at'. I liked that!