Not for the Faint Hearted

Back home after a great, if exhausting, time at Potfest in the Park. Honestly, potters are made of strong stuff. These shows are not for the faint hearted. After all the frantic making, (will it dry in time?), last minute firings, packing, loading, lugging, collapsing into tents, vans, then up next day to look good and bright and on top form, full of enthusiasm to sell your work. What a brilliant bunch of folk.

The theme for the competition piece this year was 'Marking Time'.


I realised that using time as a rhythmic pulse may not be the obvious interpretation, so it seemed important to come up with a helpfully suggestive name. After much family input, the one which hit the mark, was 'Out of 'Sink'. ('Hit the mark', could have been a good name actually),



This fellow was blatantly out of sync. I got into a spot of trouble here though. A visitor stood chatting to her friend in front of my stand, having the following conversation.


"It really annoys me when people can't spell. There was a piece on the lawn there with the title 'Out of sync', and do you know it was spelt S I N K! I can't understand how...etc, etc



I had to own up that it was me.

'It was a pun, you see. If I had spelt it correctly, a lot of people simply wouldn't have got it'.

I don't I think that she was much impressed. Fortunately others seemed to like it ok and it got the public vote.


There was a great variety of ideas - here are a few which I managed to photograph.


Lucianne's Lassalle's de-fragmented figure looked great in this setting. In the foreground Chris Cox's core samples.




This made me chuckle. Richard Dewar's piece 'The potter who is marking time because he doesn't know how to get his pot of the wheel'.


Mark Smith's lively ship on a plinth if old Times newspapers.


I didn't 'find' my camera until the last day, so by the time I took this shot my stand was rather picked over and my best pieces were missing. Indeed I was very lucky to have had such a good show, so thank you to everybody who stopped by.


I loved Meri's cowering creature with teeth. I got to know it well, as my next door neighbour. When someone else bought it on Sunday I felt that I had lost my friend. I really enjoyed getting in to Meri's fantastic world of creatures, a most enjoyable stand to be next to. With Hannah on the other side I really couldn't have had better neighbours.


There were some very realistic hare and dog sculptures....



Oops, got an itch, that gave the show away.

It was a particularly good Potfest in the Park show this year with some fantastic work, always such a treat to have the opportunity to see so many continental potters.

I tried to resist spending too many pennies, but oh so tempting. Such a little purchase from Mathieu Van der Giessen, a cup for the occasional Guinness perhaps.


I am also now the owner of a sweet little pot and spoon made by Anna Lambert whose work I have always enjoyed.