A dead clam in a box

Well, that's Spring Fling 2011 Open Studios over for this year. Phew! The windows have never been so clean, and the workshop so free of spiders since....this time last year!


It is a wonderful event, and thank you to all the hard working Spring Fling committee who put in so much time and effort. Over the three days I pretty much had a continual stream of visitors coming through. Indeed there were moments when so many arrived at once I really rather wanted to hide.

I met some of the most delightful people, but used to a quiet space mainly on my own and wanting to do everyone's interest justice I find it quite exhausting.

Thank you to all the kind and appreciative people who made the trip here. Please come back again when I have recovered!

Tomorrow the spiders can return and the workshop will soon go back to it's ordered muddle.

My nephew Patrick, was around four years old when he was taken to Australia where he had to meet hoards of Australian relatives. After being the centre of attention for the day, he told his Mother that he wished he was a clam, no, he wished he was a 'dead clam', indeed, he wished he was a 'dead clam in a box'. I remembered his words this evening.

I'll crawl out again tomorrow.

An exciting new piece of equipment

I have acquired another pugmill, 3/4 hp with a larger diameter nozzle. It seems that this Autumn I might be making even bigger extrusions. My little 1/2 hp pugmill struggles away, and although it's heart hasn't exactly slipped a beat, I know (when it overheats), that I am pushing it possibly beyond it's capacity.

It is a sad story really. Indeed a crime. The last ceramic course in Scotland finishes this term and the department is closing down. It has a good reputation, great facilities and tutors. But it is not 'cost effective' and takes up too much room. Apparently you could fit so many more students into those spaces that kilns, wheels, plaster rooms, and indeed pugmills take up. I am so lucky to have benefited from an outstanding education, I had a choice of colleges, and the one I went to, Corsham, had a ceramics department to die for. Over the last two decades they have been closing down one by one, and especially with the demise of Harrow, and the message that sent out, I do wonder that soon there may only be one or two in the whole of the UK.

I felt like a vulture picking over the sorry remains, I can only say that I will feel bound to put it to good use. But it will all have to wait for a bit as we will need a major workshop re-organisation.


Meanwhile, 'Spring Fling' looms closer. Only a week now until the regions major open studio event. I spent a day this week clearing out the shed, with visitors coming round the back and through the workshop we have to make make it look rather more respectable. Next week I'll spruce up the workshop, well that is in between glazing a last kiln load of pots, tackling the damp cupboard full of platters to slip decorate, and throwing a couple of large plates for two teachers who are retiring in 4 weeks time. Better get my skates on then.

I made it for Colvend school's teacher Miss Macdonald 21 years ago. The boy with the chalk in the centre was my son, and most of the children were recognisable. There were only 14 children (from 4 to 11 years old), in the school. A group of school teachers came in on Saturday with this plate in their hands. They wanted the same idea for their own teachers. This one was when I was still using a majolica glaze, which I have gradually phased out and now don't use at all. For one the glaze recipe ceased to work consistently well, (a change of materials perhaps), but I was also finding that I was getting too tight with my painting. The last straw was when at a show someone asked if the designs were printed. However it was good to see this plate and remember where I was at 21 years ago.

Crime and Punishment

I packed up the pots for the show at Imagine Gallery yesterday. It took most of the day making each one into a football of bubblewrap.I couldn't bear the idea of a great hefty foot kicking the teeth out of one of my mariners, or of some great hulk sitting on one of the long flat hanging dishes - both of which I am quite sure happens in transit. So I had in mind the Princess and the Pea.

Before I said goodbye to these pieces I had a bit of fun trying out 'movie' on my hand held camera. Please excuse the amateur wobbles.

I Shot the albatross

All averred

Stony Eyes

Dead Birds and Deadlines

I don’t know where the last three weeks went. I have done a fair bit of throwing, and the stock shelves are filling up though I could still do with more time on the wheel making the popular lines such as mugs and jugs. But my mind has been more occupied with the ‘Ancient Mariner'.



I have put in a fair amount of time into this project, at times perhaps rather indulgent, but I was really enjoying myself.



Last Saturday the deadline loomed loud and clear and I had to pull out of a planned hill walk with friends to knuckle down and finish off the glazing. The kiln HAD to be packed that evening. As I listened to some torrential downpours hammering on the roof I decided that maybe glazing in a cosy workshop with some good music was the better option anyway.




I was a bit nervous about opening the kiln this week, sometimes I have a quick peek last thing at night when it is nearly, but not QUITE cool enough. But no, I waited, not wanting to have bad dreams. One of Hannah’s pottery films from her excellent ‘Pottery Porn’ film night last week was about Gwyn Hanssen Pigott. At one point this wonderful elderly lady announces, (with a smile), that - ‘Actually, making pots is quite stressful...GLAZING them is stressful, PACKING the kiln is stressful.....FIRING them is stressful.... and OPENING the kiln is stressful’. Oh how we love making pots really, but I did think of her words on Wednesday.



And thankfully I am pretty pleased this time. I seem to have sorted out the somewhat drab finish of the mark one of the ‘Coleridge candle boats’. Rubbing slips into the faces has lifted them and brought out the expressions just the way I had hoped.


I had a customer today (who bought my snakes and ladders low stool for a ruby wedding present. Happily entwined snakes: ups and downs of married life, all deliciously symbolic.) She was a painter, and most enthusiastic about her work. ‘I am worried that I don’t have enough time left in my life to paint all I want to’, she said. I knew what she meant, I often have that feeling myself.

A Motley Crew

Last month I made some 'Coleridge' candle holders. Though reasonably happy with a couple of them the finish on the others was pretty disappointing. I was really getting into the theme, so I have been enjoying making some mark two versions.


Using an extruded section as the boat form, the ends are filled with sailors, all based on the narrative of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.








I have taken some time to make several test heads. They have all been coloured in different ways and I will test fire them before embarking on colouring the real ones. I really need their expressions to show this time, as the first ones were way too dark. I have used about three different layers of thin slip, dabbed on and then rubbed in with a dry brush, with some oxides later.


Here is the Motley Crew drying in the sun. I had to give them all names so as to identify which is coloured with what. The phone book threw up a few good ones.

Post script is that they came out of the test kiln tonight and I have some beauties. (Charlie Beaver, Ramsey Stitt, Horace Kidd......). Tomorrow I'll get the bigger pieces coloured, yippee.

John Dix Demo

It’s been a couple of weeks since I went to a John Dix Demo day and I’ve been meaning to post a few photographs. Jan, who had been here the previous week on a work placement, was travelling down there from my place, and it gave me a much needed prompt. So I travelled over the border down to the Solway Ceramics Centre with my friends Su and Hannah - only 12 miles across the Solway as the crow flies, though around 60 or 70 by road.


I have to admit, I come out with hands up - I have never really GOT tea bowls. I have noticed that they are often approached with some sort of hallowed and reverent air, which has has never been a good starting point for me. However I watched and listened to John Dix making his, with increasing fascination. There was much I recognised in the fluidity and economy if his movements. The harmonious calm of hands which knew where they were going and what they were after. I loved the way the wheel turned with a lazy serenity, and the deliberate but controlled irregularity of the form as it developed its own character. I know I when I got home and looked at my own pots they suddenly seemed horribly tight.



But most of all I loved watching him make these long dishes. Thrown without a base, uncurled and thudded onto the table to stretch it some more, then the end pushed over with a confident hand. It could have been a Tai Chi movement.

These fat handled jugs were made to pour with either a right or left hand, a lovely idea.


It was glorious Spring weather last weekend, just perfect for a planned hill walk in the Moffat hills with some friends.

The first real sun for me this year. I felt great that evening and slept so well. I see that I just need to climb a hill every day.

Little Squidgey Amorphous Things

It is really annoying when you have to change your email address, or for that matter your mobile phone number. Even when you THINK you have informed everyone in your address book, there is always someone who has been missed. And then does everyone ever delete the offending address/number? I know I am guilty of having a few duplicate email addresses leading to the oft asked question.... 'Now is this his OLD one, or his NEW one'?

Well for one of the above reasons I have been missing my 'Potfest in the Park' emails, so I had no idea of what this years competition theme might be. However, some dear folk, called 'Us,' took it upon themelves to enlighten me today with this kind post card. Thank you 'Us'!

A rather long blog

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything I almost don’t know where to start!

Well, it’s been busy with lots getting finished and still quite a bit underway.
The bird candle holders took ages, I spent WAY too long on them, and then proceeded to use slip in untried, untested colours combinations, using mesh to spray through and give them spotted breasts.


All bisc fired, (above), and I unpacked them from the glaze on Thursday morning, hardly time to get to know them, and dashed over to McGill Duncan Gallery with a hot box for the ‘Flights of Fancy’ exhibition. The show opened last night and my potter friend from college days Sue Dunne came up for the preview. She had some of her beautifully delicate pots with feathers and eggs in the show. Zoe always makes such a great job of displaying the work, with paintings and prints so well and tastefully hung. Everything looked fantastic. The spotted birds looked very happy on the windowsill, and chirrupped, ‘What were you worrying about’?

These are slip decorated and drying. I had an order for one like this, which I made last year. It's always difficult to 'repeat', without losing the initial spark, so as a result things usually get changed. I prefer the second one, where I changed the position of the tiger.


I got my ‘post card’ tiles finished and sent off for the deadline. I was really pleased with them in the end. Especially as they dried totally flat and shrank to EXACTLY post card size. You dancer!


The tiles for the firesurround are drying slowly under suction boards. They are long and narrow and I dare not rush them.



I also enjoyed working on these Coleridge candle holders. Here they are before I went and ruined them. Yes they turned out ghastly, as though I had tipped some dreadful 'evening class' glaze over them. What was I thinking? Still, next attempt they will be beautiful, honestly. I'll do a few glaze tests first. It always happens when you’re rushing and do I learn?


And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.

Having cleared some of the deadline stuff, I ‘ve at last got back to working on the ‘sidewinder dishes, waiting patiently. Great to design, I’m enjoying them.


I had a really good commission - a large dish with spotty fish. 'Just have fun'., she said. If only every commission was like this.


...and I was happy with this tiger ripple. Win some, lose some!


Another sort of creation, (here modelled by Inigo), was a headpiece for the Year of the Rabbit birthday party the other day. What a lot of rabbits, hares, magicians, white rabbits, carrots and even a fox or so made their appearance at this spectacular 60th birthday. Sorry to anyone who was nearly decapitated/ had an eye poked by some wayward ears.


Deborah Britt nominated me for the ‘Stylish Blogger Award’. Not sure what this means but thank you very much Deborah. I am meant to write seven little known/ unknown things about myself. Hmm, do I say things to sound a trumpet, which are mind numbingly boring, embarrassing.....what a challenge. And which seven to choose, or can I even think of seven?


Mulling it over I got a bit stuck on childhood, but here goes....

1. As a child ....I was asked by my Grandfather what I wanted to BE. I always said ‘An artist’. (He used to pretend to mis-hear and say, ‘An actress)?’

2. As a child ....I was happy for hours as long as I had cardboard, selotape and scissors.

3. As a child ....While at boarding school my friend Pipkin and I lived a double life. We WERE knights - Pipkin was Sir Lancelot and I was Sir Philip D’Aubigny. Amongst many of our ‘BRAVE FEATS’, we made scrolls, charred and sealed with wax which we buried in the out-of-bounds dust of the buildings’ attic. One day some child may yet discover them, if the plumber hasn’t got there first.

4. I made my first ceramic object at school. It was a rearing horse, which I rubbed oxide into and which sat proudly on my parents shelves for years. I was dying to use the wheel they had, and when I got my first shot at it I made ...a teapot! (What a monster)!

5. I spent nine months in Sicily with a group of school leavers from Dartington School working on a village regeneration project set up by an ex -teacher (my role was to help get a pottery up and running). During this period I inadvertently became engaged to a Sicilian fisherman, ( for one night only). It was all a horrible mistake. Giovanni was prattling on to me and I kept politely replying, ‘Si, Si, Si’, (my Italian/ Sicilian not being brilliant). Unbeknown to me I had agreed to marry him! It was sorted out the next day when he came back with a RING and an English (New York) speaking sidekick Michelangelo. Quite a bit of bad feeling ensued and for a while I was in the doghouse.


6. My friend Gina and I hitch-hiked back through Sicily and Italy visiting every art work we had covered in our A level Early Renaissance Art course. We slept in ditches, stayed with people we met, and had one night in a nunnery in Milan where there was a strange upright bath with a seat in it which on arrival we were firmly directed to. (We must have smelled).

7. While at Corsham (Bath academy of Art) I wrote an epic poem illustrated with etchings, set and bound in the college studios, entitled ‘Table’. (The story of a lighthouse keeper).


The first page read as follows:

Table’s kitchen steamed and boiled,
a humble man was he,
He loved his food, his warmth, his bed,
He never missed his tea.
The sea outside would rise and fall
and all the sailors sink and drown,
but high inside his lighthouse tower
snug was he within his bower,
snug and cosy, sleepy
falling
sleepy
like a noisy bee.
zzzzzzzzzzz



And as I write down that first stanza I can but think of Japan and the dreadful terrifying earthquake and Tsunami. Fiction becomes reality. My heart weeps.

Manic Momentum

Its been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks. I started too many things at once, which always creates its own manic momentum. In addition I had a couple of glaze firings in both the big kiln and the top loader. As the kilns are both in the workshop the additional heat has been drying out pots behind my back. Silly.

Now I am under too much self imposed pressure, so for anyone who thinks that the life of a potter is a relaxing little dreamy world of spinning clay...

As I write my list of things to work on is as follows:

- 50 mugs, slipped inside and out, sitting in the damp cupboard waiting for handles and slip trailing.

- Tall candle holders which I have all but finished modelling but need to be sprayed with several layers of slip.

- Tiles (for round a fireplace - a commission) extruded, but need to be measured, cut, designed and decorated.

- Five waving long dishes, which need a fair bit of thought as they are the first to be made from the newly moved pugmill, I need to think about ends, handles, and the design.

- Shorter dishes to put handles on and slip decorate, one for an order.

- Several nine by nine wall hanging inch tiles to decorate

- Two glaze kilns to unpack and sort through

- New pots to photograph



I did manage to take a shot of these flappy dishes this afternoon, fresh from Monday's kiln. I'm really pleased with how they have turned out. I had the kiln packed ready to go but had to wait until Monday evening to fire it as I had been called upon to do Jury Service and had no idea how long it would last. In fact I wasn't picked and was home by lunch time, but I did wonder whether 'Pots drying out' might have served as an excuse for exemption!



I have been asked to take part in an exhibition of artists from my old school Dartington Hall. To help raise funds for the project we have been asked to send three postcard sized drawings for an auction in March. I have had a block over this - I don’t draw nearly enough these days, designing pots as often on the back of an envelope as in a sketch book. Amanda suggested I just make some post card size slabs of clay, and strangely even the thought of that has helped to free my mind. I LOVE drawing on clay!



I spent way too long working on these new candleholders. I was really enjoying myself and lost track of time. They are a scaled up version of some I made before, standing around 45cms high with a fatter body and extruded wings. I think I may use colour in a similar way to the flappy guinea fowl dish.

After a run of seven in a similar style, I had two left over to play with. I have in mind the theme of an exhibition for which I have been asked to contribute some pieces. The bird's body became a boat and this time I wanted to put an albatross on the prow. Gannets are easy to throw with sharp streamline beaks but the first albatrosses I threw were far too pointy looking. An evening of albatross research later, and Rodger and I had both fallen for sooty albatrosses. What eyebrows they have.






I should also admit that in January I had taken on way too many outside commitments - again my own fault. The Feral Choir put on two performances of Robert Burns, 'The Giftie Bard', the second of which was in Edinburgh. It was a pacey programme of readings, songs, and tunes on fiddle and clarsach with a stunning soloist Mairi Campbell. I became a Burns convert overnight. (Now its over I can take down the kitchen wallpaper of Burns words to learn).



Oh, and then there was the 'Strictly' charity fundraiser at the Easterbrook Hall in Dumfries, this year 'Strictly round the World'. Our group was Brazil. I'm the one in dreadlocks, luckily at the back.