I've had a good couple of weeks. Most of September was taken up with catching up on my throwing, and getting down to a few outstanding and rather random orders (- a mug with particular cat on it and such like). All fine, but not really making me jump out of bed with excitement.
The extruding experimentation of last month had thrown up one interesting profile and I have kept the sections under polythene waiting for a space to play about with them. They needed to be caught before they got too hard, (so a selection of thrown name plaques have been put back on one side to keep damp for a bit longer - sorry folks).
What I have really enjoyed has been shaping the edge with added coils. I had forgotten how much I used to make with coils and they seemed like an old and familiar friend.
I took some photos of these at the damp clay stage when they are rather luscious, but then discovered that I didn't have a card in the camera, so these images of them are when I have marked out a design and sprayed several layers of background slip colours.
I do love the scale of them. Possibly somewhere in the back of my mind were those wonderful carved wooden vessels which had delighted me on my recent trip to the British museum.
But not everyone is going to be have a need or place for a monster dish, so I have scaled down the profile and am now working on a series of smaller, but similar in feel, ' fruit dish' size versions.
It's good to be working on something completely new again, albeit with several deadlines still looming but nothing like the pressure of the first half of the year. Now I am underway I feel much more energised and looking forward to the approaching winter to take stock and replenish my creative batteries.
