Table, comets and a glimpse of Royalty

It was a long wet Sunday, so I was quite happy to stay in the cosy workshop (with two kilns cooling), working on some penguins and some tiles. By tea time I had gradually prised the door of the rather too hot big kiln open, and by supper time I had managed to unpack it and have look at my table. It must work as a table, because I lost the lens cap of the camera shortly after taking this photo - because I had put it down on the ...TABLE!

I'm pleased with the top surface, the glaze is really smooth and tempting, like one big tile. It is still a strange beast, more of a character than a beauty, but I have a certain fondness for its eccentricity.




There has been a lot of glazing this week, and still a lot left to do, but it is great to see some new work out tonight.


It seems ages ago that I started these long dishes. They are difficult to fit in the kiln, so kept missing out. Long dishes need long things on them, hence comets and thin mermaids.


I've just packed the big kiln up again with my pelican seat. It is the only thing in it. I'm not convinced that it is totally dry yet but as the bricks are still pretty hot it's been stewing all evening. I'll see what the steam test looks like before I go to bed, and depending on that may bisc fire it tonight.

I was enjoying drawing on these dishes at the beginning of the week. They're drying out now and hopefully may be ready to bisc as Pelican comes out. It is back to back at the moment to get things finished for Potfest in the Park. Rodger is busy making me some extra display boxes at the moment, doing a little each day - he's on to the sanding stage now and it was a treat to have his company in the workshop this morning. The finger joints are a work of art in themselves, he was enjoying using my scroll saw for them. Pity to paint them over.

As an interlude from pots this week I did have Wednesday afternoon off to go to Kirkcudbright and play samba for the Queen - at least that is what I was told. But of course it was playing samba for the crowds WAITING for the Queen, NOT for her at all.

Anyway we saw the lady, small and bent in her lovely turquoise outfit with matching pill box hat, (surrounded by some even bigger and shinier hats of local dignitaries ). She arrived in a huge maroon limousine, did a quick tour of the harbour - I was told that the brave lady was given champagne and pate to sample, followed by a freshly grilled scallop from the local fishing boat. Then off she flew in her helicopter, at which point the heavens opened with a loud clap of thunder, and everyone dived for cover.
So just a glimpse of royalty but lots of strange cameos which might well appear on a pot one day.

Webbed feet and Web Sites

I have been working out how I am going to complete all that I hoped to make for Potfest, and so it was that I spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of last week solidly slip decorating a fair mountain of jugs, card racks, oil bottles and small dishes. I got quite stiff and had back ache by the end, but the reward is a LOT OF POTS on the shelves. One bisc load is now ready to glaze, including the table which fired beautifully flat. I have been enjoying putting a few cups on it.

Oh, and today I finished constructing the Pelican seat. It went pretty well until it came to the feet.

They took quite a bit of sorting out - the same challenge as the eagle seat, how to tie them into those great structural legs in a way which didn't look as though they were an after thought. I had to do a fair bit of looking at webbed feet, lots of images and sketches now lying around the workshop of these wondrous things.

Will it dry out in time for Potfest, and is it SAFE to let it dry too fast, The weather we have been having has been hot and windy, perfect for drying, but it has suddenly changed to humid and muggy. But maybe that will suit better.

I got my disc of photos back from Shannon, so here is the studio shot of the eagle seat. Would be nice to have an 'in situ' one outside, or in a lovely hall way, or landing, if anyone has one to spare.


I've been meaning to mention that Inigo has redesigned our original Barnbarroch Pottery web site. It has some good photos of the showroom and the area around us, though I still have a major job of taking some decent product shots to put on it. It is nice and easy for me to use though, so to be going on with I have just uploaded some 'snaps', with better images to come as soon as I have a moment...(AFTER Potfest).

Our original Barnbarroch Pottery site was one of the first sites Oskar made when still at university and though at the time he made a great job of it, somehow it had got terribly out of date, and I eventually decided to ask him to supersede it with my 'christinehestersmith' site on which I could display more of the one off pieces.

I was going to slowly phase out the Barnbarroch Pottery site but then realised that it still did actually serve a useful function. Visitors to the area needed a site which encouraged them to visit us here and which advertised the area plus something which might remind them of the designs they may have seen over the summer when they rang up later.



So two sites Smith I still am!

One of the many things which I would have loved to have done last weekend was to go to the opening of Jim’s ‘Seventy at Seventy’ exhibition at his Booth House Gallery. I had been a bit of a silly about this, or else missed a week somewhere in my planning, as I had rather thought that it was this weekend. By the time I realised it was all too complicated to organise and I never made it in the end. Never mind, it is on all summer so I will get to see some of his seventy pots even if I missed the celebratory aspect of such an esteemed achievement.

This one is strange

Got the top on my table on Friday. Hmm, making the top separately may not have been such a great idea, as it looks a little strange. Fish associations may have turned into more anvil/ ironing board, but we shall see. There is an eccentricity and a certain elegance which I quite like but I am not sure that the construction is controlling me rather than me the construction!

With this scale I had to have everything pretty firm before the assembly stage, and beyond the point of no return as far as altering things. Still, I do have a second one, (oh yes) under wraps so I will take the lesson on board and hope to improve.

I had to use my RSJ template again to secure the legs. I never thought of myself as an engineer - indeed an engineer I am most definitely not, Allie and I were discussing the intuitive and the planned as making approaches. I would have to call this structure 'intuitive engineering', the concept of which is possibly a bit of an oxymoron.
Nothing engineering about the latest dreadlocks. French knitting and quite addictive it is too.

Samba Sisters had a float at Kelloholm gala on Saturday. We wound round all the little back streets scaring several dogs, but being rewarded by a sea of smiling faces of all ages.

Meat pies, unidentifiable flat sandwiches, coloured cakes and fizz laid on for the performers, brilliant stuff!

Try and try again

There was so much finishing off for Spring Fling it is good to be making again. I threw loads of mugs last Wednesday, and with Allie back from Malawi to help with slipping and handles we should get them all ready for me to slip trail soon.

I had some extruded sections waiting under polythene from several weeks ago, and I have got started on some new large scale ideas.


I have an idea for a table which involves a wavy upright central column. I made a die which used the full capacity of the Big blue. It extruded beautifully but then how/when to cut it off. I dried it for a while with the heat gun and left it with a wedge underneath to air dry for the rest of the afternoon. No hurry to cut it off, I could do that at bedtime if need be. Ten minutes after Allie left I heard a loud WHOOMPH as it collasped and hit the wooden floor. Och weel, Try again. The next time Allie and I tried to lie it sideways, (after an initial power dry), but no chance. The middle was still too soggy. It was on the fouth attempt that I got out the big guns - the gas burner. This time I really got the thing steaming. I could see it trying to rip at the top and kept ramming clay ‘sticking plasters’ on to the tear until eventually I won. I still left it for an hour or so hanging from the big blue, but what a beauty. Tomorrow maybe I will get it joined to the base. I held it there just to try and it looked like it had potential.

I also want to make another seat with more of a bottom shape.

I've got the section tipped off, but I shall have to wrap it up tight until the mugs are decorated. I do get a great sense of satisfaction from the slipped thrown ware but it is the big stuff that really gets me excited at the moment, so I am having to be very patient. I need more hours in the day and more days in the week at the moment. But then it is also summer, and I don't want to miss the good weather, I need to cut the grass, find time to get out on my bike, sail a boat and play music. Sometimes it just isn't possible to fit it all in!


I decided to spend the last of my official funding on getting some swanky photographs of some of my latest pieces. It was rather a scary thing to transport the eagle seat up to Edinburgh ( as it is has already been homed), and in particular I kept thinking about Hannah, and cars shunting into my boot. I’ve probably never used the rear mirror so much.

It was a most interesting day, looking at these amazing images on Shannon's computer screen, which were actually my pots! It was also very exhausting and quite draining, making so many decisions, and actually quite strange to have so much time to really look at and contemplate my own work. Maybe it's like seeing yourself on stage - 'Am I really that ugly, mixed with, oh my profile isn't that bad actually......' Whatever I’m excited about seeing the final images.

Spring Fling madness

Monday evening, Spring Fling 2010 is over and I am completely wasted! What a weekend, this was the busiest one we have ever had here. From 10.30am, no in fact well before 10.30 (the official opening time), we had a constant stream of visitors. Huge thanks to Chris my sister in law who came up for the weekend to help. I literally couldn't have done without her!


The idea was to get visitors to follow the arrows and come round the back, into the courtyard, through the back door of the workshop and encourage them to go out through the showroom.


Of course it didn't work like that and visitors arrived through every door, at the same time. Chris stood in the showroom welcoming people, while I manned the workshop and yard offering explanations, coffee and flapjack. The sandwiches and tea which we were brought were left uneaten and went cold, it was quite mad.


It was all worth that panic and burning the midnight oil last week though. Friday's kiln of finished pots looked good, and the courtyard was very happy with pansies in City Link and the ceramic seats in the sun, at least sun on the second two days. It really made my day today to see some people sitting in them having their coffee.


I took very few photos of the eagle seat, there was no chance with it only out of the kiln on Friday morning, but he did his duty manning the back door. It was definitely worth putting him back in the kiln for another coat of glaze as he looks much smarter now.

To my amazement within the first hour on Saturday morning someone bought him! Of course I was delighted and amazed, but also rather dismayed, as he simply hasn't been around long enough for me to think about him and get to the state where I am happy to let him go. However they were very nice people and were in no hurry to go off with him there and then, so I do have time to make a good photographic record.


I had some really very nice 'Spring Flingers', all interested and interesting, and so appreciative. It is all very rewarding, but now I am off to have a LONG sleep, I hope, and dream...

of Harpies perhaps. (This one is a benign chimera. I blame Rodger for that...)

Creations, Chaos and last minute Panic

The last couple of weeks have had too few hours in them to achieve all that I had hoped and planned in the run up to Spring Fling. I have simply been juggling too many roles at once. As the days went by I had to rewrite a less ambitious schedule daily. The main priority was to get the eagle seat glazed and fired, along with the black twin vases and bendy vases, coracle pots and black tiles.


What have I achieved? Well, the eagle was glazed and fired, but being a perfectionist I decided to reglaze sections where I wasn’t happy with the patchiness of the glaze application. (It is really hard to apply the matt glaze at the correct thickness. Too thick it bubbles or crawls, too thin it looks mean and indecisive, and I didn’t want a bald headed eagle).



Of the black vases, most came out well and the second half will be cool enough to unpack tomorrow, along with the coracle pots and the eagle. The tiles will have to wait until another time.


I didn’t manage to start of any new work so I am afraid no slip trailing demos this year, unless I have time to extrude some tiles tomorrow, though I think that every minute may have already been accounted for!


Today I should have been tidying the workshop and cleaning the showroom but as I write both are still in chaos. The showroom is being used as a temporary photography studio, which is tricky as customers are still wanting to come in and are having to pick their way over pots which are strewn across the floor.

In my last post I described how I seemed to be having some issues over memory lapses. My last minute panic today arose from me losing my Spring Fling signage and incentive cards. Not just losing, but having no memory whatsoever of having them or putting them anywhere! With 24 hours left to go I was scrabbling round searching every crazy ‘safe’ place. Rodger eventually found them, this only after Rhiannon had set to to print and laminate some replacements, in ....the fridge!?

..and lets hope for a sunny Spring Fling!

A snug fit and some sanity issues.

Well in all honesty I can't really say that it was good management, but when we came to shuffle the big eagle into the kiln it was a very well judged fit indeed. Hey, there was a whole millimetre to spare. (What this photo doesn't show, and indeed what I had forgotten about was that the lintel is a couple of inches lower than the dome of the roof).


It is on a very slow firing, so I am fairly confident that it should be alright, that is as long as I really remembered to vent all the sections.

Remembering, well there lies a confession of a tale. I had a visit from some policemen yesterday. Was I the owner of a certain red car? Er. yes. (Quickly thinking, loving Mother that I am - what has my lad been up to...sorry, Inigo). The car had been recorded on CCTV driving away from a petrol station without paying! REALLY?!* I keep a diary and checked, and yes, indeed I had been in Dumfries on that day,(to see the Tide Machine), and yes I did fill up, and yes it was at around that time. The police were very polite I must say, and together we checked my receipts and bank statement. No two ways about it, I had to come out with my hands up! I thought I would be marched of to prison there and then. However they obviously thought, 'Poor old doolally soul', and said that I would just have to drive in and settle up.
I reckon that Inigo got his own back by telling all his friends about his crazy Mum on face book!
(Still, slightly worrying, in the light of having walked off with someone elses supermarket trolley yesterday afternoon. Poor woman had to chase me round the Co-op).

But I have been working hard. Loads of long dishes slipped and drying out. I have been so enjoying drawing direct on to the clay. There is something very immediate and decisive about the line. I spent a rather indulgently long time incising the black vases (presently being bisc fired with the Eagle). I'm looking forward to getting them glazed next week.

I posted off these commemorative plates last week and they have thankfully been well received. They do take a very long time to make, and to be honest I don't charge nearly enough, considering the research and design time not to mention the execution itself. I try not to take too many on, it could get quite out of hand, though there is always a demand. The one above was a more inspiring brief than the one below, with Newcastle University shield in the centre. I very nearly boobed on that one actually, as I looked up the Newcastle University emblem on google and found it it be an attractive unicorn head. JUST in time I realised that it was Newcastle Australia, not Northumberland.

The impending Open Studio event Spring Fling is coming up at an alarming rate. There is quite a bit of site maintenance to be done. After the ice and floods of the winter and Spring, our car parking area had become a quagmire. I spent the weekend power hosing the patio and courtyard, clearing out the shed, while Rodger valiantly set too and spread most of the gravel himself.


In fact he was probably pushing himself a wee bit too hard. Whatever he has landed himself with another spike of temperature which will slow him down again. Gravel looks good though.
Rodger did manage to get up to Edinburgh for his first major outing, albeit finely orchestrated to be as relaxing as possible, to hear one our favourite Malian singers Rokia Traore in the Usher hall. We had bought tickets way back in February hoping that he would be well enough, and we were right at the front. She was indeed wonderful, beautiful, charismatic and a with a stunning voice which was both uplifting and brought tears to my eyes in turn. Though it felt like a major expedition, it was definitely one to be remembered.

Garden of Cosmic Speculation

One day a year the Garden of Cosmic Speculation is open to the public. This year I actually remembered in time and alerted other members of my family who came from far and wide to join me there. The place is a visual feast and everywhere I turned brought new wonders. Why, there was even a giant undulating landform constructed from turf and gravel which looked remarkably like the wiggly dish which I had been working on last week....!


There are plenty of websites with wonderful pictures of Charles Jencks extrardinary creations, but here are a few of my own.



It was my brother's birthday, and how I wished that I had brought a candle to stick on the top.


Now how about this for a seat.


After the Cosmic Garden, My 'large scale' pieces have shrunk to insignificance!