More Throwing

Having finished a load of slip decorating, I went straight into more throwing this week.

I was enjoying revisiting the thrown oval. A wide bottomless dish, manipulated when still pliable and pressed onto a slabbed base. The rolled rim gave it a sturdy edge which lent support to the sides, preventing them from being too floppy. I did need an extra pair of hands to lift it off it's board and onto the slab safely.


Tomorrow's delight will be to add some handles and possibly feet.


An order for a teapot prompted me to get some thrown. Although I love making teapots, I make them only rarely on account of them taking so long. The throwing of these went very smoothly and satisfyingly the lids plopped home perfectly first time. Years ago I remember asking Mick Arnup how he got his lids to fit so beautifully. He just smiled and said one word, (with perhaps a note of pity in his voice, or maybe I'm inventing that bit), 'Calipers'! It's just taken me ages to be able to use them properly.

Freshly thrown pasta dishes which were slipped this afternoon.

So I have lots on the go, thrown pots are covering every shelf and table.

I have put my boats on one side for the time being. I don't want to rush the glazing of them and I will enjoy thinking about them more when I feel I have a good couple of kiln loads of slipped pots under my belt.

A Passionate Cat and an Angel Potter

I've been doing a fair bit of throwing over the last few weeks. I need to replenish essentials. I always seem to have mugs on my 'To Make list', but I never have many in the stockroom. They seem to disappear as fast as I can make them. In some ways I would like to stop making them, but I do love to please, and actually there is something very satisfying by a board of freshly thrown mugs.


She really did not help me with my throwing last week. Passionate cat that she is, I am her favourite person at the moment.


Lucky I was only throwing stoppers.


The 'Spring Fling Taster' Open Studio exhibition opened at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries earlier this month.


To help raise funds for this event we were asked if we would make a small figure to represent our medium, to be sold by silent auction. There were some really great takes on the theme, all nicely mounted in small frames, apart from my contribution 'The Angel Potter', displayed on it's own little shelf. I decided to use some of my very old gold lustre on the wings. The top of the tiny bottle was so stuck that the bottle broke in my hands, and I ended up using rather an overdose of it - so much so that it dribbled down from the wings. This angel is worth bidding for!


I have had a couple of bisc firing in the big kiln, so all my boats are through and waiting to be glazed. I had an unfortunate mishap with one of the big dishes though. I thought that it had JUST squeezed into the kiln, corner to corner but closing the door was just too much for it and it's handle fell to bits when I opened it to unpack. Oops!


The Directional dish was fired on a sloping shelf and this was fine.It's a pity I didn't do the same for the shelf above. I must really stop guessing and start Measuring!

Boats drying out

I spent the best part of this week finishing the flotilla and decorating my two large dishes. I rather like the colour of the pieces as their layers of sprayed slips begin to dry. (I now have a rather sore shoulder to pay for what was a very long spraying slip session. They are pretty heavy to lift in and out of my Wendy House spray booth and I applied several colours to each piece so not surprising).


The faces have been washed and rubbed with three different slips, brushed well in.



I have added a little jewel of colour ( I hope) on the sailor's collars to brighten them up a little. Other bits will rely on touches of glaze.



I slightly changed my mind about the 'plant barge', as the pots I threw just didn't look comfortable when I tried them in the slots. Instead it will be a 'fresh flower barge'. The vases are now extruded cylinders and I rather like the idea of masts with flags of flowers.

This evening everything is drying out slowly under polythene with the thinner section of oars and tails still wrapped in clingfilm. I did have a nasty scare the other evening as one boat started to capsise. It appeared to be being pulled over by the thinner section of the oar which was beginning to dry too fast. With some extra clay plugs from below as it lay sideways on foam and twenty four hours to even up I seem to have saved it, so far....never say die.

The week's shipyard and other images

I've been at it all week and still have two boats left to put together tomorrow. How many did I embark on? Here are some of the creations so far.


This one is going to take plants. I have thrown some holders which will locate into the holes in the deck. It should become a sort of plant barge when it is finished.


The honeymooning couple or the hen pecked husband?


A pile of oars, made from extruded sections and then pulled a little,

and a pile of sailors waiting for their oars (and their hair). What a tangle of arms I got into with this one. Everything had to be put together at exactly the right time - the oars stiff enough and the arms bendy enough, but not too floppy. I was late through for supper that night, they couldn't be left until things had been stabilised and they were falling over and flopping with oars bending the wrong way for quite a while. It was hard to have enough fingers and thumbs. At one point I thought that I had put figures in back to front, cut them out again, making a huge mess in the process and then realised that they were right after all!


These fine rowers are now sitting on the swell, perhaps feeling a little seasick


and not at all happy about the upstart in the speed boat.

If I have been having fun this week, this sculptor has most definitely been having fun.


He is kinetic sculptor Johnny White, and has a touring exhibition which we are lucky enough to have at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries until Easter, entitled 'Beastly Machines'.

Here are some images from the opening on Saturday.
'Thrush Hour' above.


'Fido Dogskiofski'


'The Lifecycle of a Mosquito'

It's the sort of show that children would love, and were loving. A dog which barked honkily when you stroked it's nose, a mosquito peddling a penny farthing. Not to mention the whale with an industrial bottle brush for its spout.

Feet, Heads and Waves

There are so many boats to fill that now I have a Head and Feet production line on the go.


Plus a wave factory.

At one point last week I wondered whether I had really overdone it, I wasn't sure what to work on next. It doesn't help that all the pieces are hidden, wrapped in polythene and that I was losing track of which was what. At last I'm feeling that I am getting somewhere, and am reasonably pleased with the progress.



The boats are starting to sail. These two hulls are sitting on the 'swell' which I made by slumping the monster slab into the hammock. It still feels rather like an 'adventure' of a piece and I am not exactly sure how it is all going to turn out though I can see where I would like to go with it.



This is one that I have finished putting together. I was experimenting with placing the boat forward of the wave, leaving it behind. I liked the idea of the wave becoming the speed boat's wake and it seems to give more movement. I am working on a rowing boat which I am placing behind the wave, as it seems that when you are in a rowing boat the next wave is always still to come.

A Directional Dish and a foam harbour

From feeling that my feet had become irrevocably glued to the long holiday that is Christmas and New Year, I now have so much work underway that every surface in the workshop has been filled.


I am back where I love to be best, happily following my train of thoughts with my hands. Of course not every thought is worth pursuing, but what I like is when a small idea starts to develop through the making process so that often unforeseen happenings unfold with quite unexpected end results.

It's not that I drift around in an unplanned dreamy sort of way, everything is in fact pretty well planned, but when two dimensional ideas become three, especially when extruding is involved I always seem to be quite surprised at the outcome. I think this is why I really love extruding as a making method.


I'm looking forward to finding the right design for this one. It seems to be going in one direction - it has the feeling of a sledge or some sort of weird craft.


Still playing with the boat themes from last year, I needed another size of 'hull' to sit happily on my watery base, so spent some time cutting a new die. I learnt a lot from last summers 'dragon boat' making session and knew this time to include a deck support for this shape. They behaved pretty well once I'd got the clay firmed up enough. The first attempts flopped horribly, so project was aborted until I'd dried flops, sliced sacks out on suction boards and re kneaded. Here they are supported by their foam harbour to firm up. As usual once underway I made far too many, always after the perfect one.



Some long thin boatish dishes and another harbour of coracle type ones in the foam support.


Once the boats have firmed up a little I can turn them over as arches and let them dry to leather hard. A funny thing about our new heating system is that things aren't drying nearly as quickly. But the workshop is warmer?! Maybe it's because there are less drafts. Whatever the reason it's suiting me fine right now since this lot would have me panicking if they were all to dry at once.


This afternoon I cut a die for some sea, so I should get at least some of these sailing tomorrow.

A Muckle Great Slab

Much though I enjoyed the break, it is great to be underway again. I started the year by rolling out the largest slab that the new slab roller could manage. What a monster.



I collected it up by rolling it round one of the fat cardboard tubes that the lino was wrapped round, to slump it into the mould - a cloth suspended in a frame, with three rods beneath to create a ripple. I'm looking forward to tipping it out, hoping that it will look good upside down, as a watery base for something.


Other slabs I draped over some plaster hump moulds and I've been attaching extruded runners to them.



These are going to be wall hanging picture-platters. I was feeling a little blank, distracted by the Christmas break generally and was going to start the year with a batch of throwing to get the juices flowing, but a cut finger put paid to that. In fact it's been good to have launched myself into the bigger stuff as it's really got me back in the making mood. It's exciting to find the ideas and energy come tumbling in.

Plans for the year are taking shape. I have three main events so far to make work for, that is apart from our ongoing showroom, which relies a lot on visitors to the region who may or may not turn up. Who knows with such economic uncertainty around. There is our region's 'Spring Fling' open studio event in June, (four days this year to mark it's 10th year), Earth and Fire at the end of June, then Potfest in the Park in July, all great events but suddenly in terms of kilns they all don't sound so very far away - help!


I wonder sometimes if it would be better not to stop but then again much though I love my workshop it feels sweeter for a break from it. The old fingernails had actually grown quite long over the holiday period which shows either how quickly they grow, or how long it is since I kneaded up clay. They are now back to the usual broken and short pottery workshop variety.


I was enjoying the cacti which were looking particularly lush in the low winter light today.

There is a pot under this bunch, and you can just see the hat of a Mexican peaking out, the rest of the spiral is buried so you will just have to take my word for it that there are donkeys and Mexicans encircling the plants.

A toast to you all

To all those who follow this blog - A toast to you this Winter Solstice, and wishing you a Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for 2012. Thank you too to those of you who have left kind and interesting comments over the year. I know that I am very bad at replying but I do appreciate them all.

Oh ..and our heating is working again back on! Yippee. (It's also suddenly got milder , but hey ho from now on we will be toasty warm again, all ready to get cracking after the Christmas break).

Christmas orders completed

The month is rushing by and it is the winter solstice tomorrow. Hurrah, soon the days will start to grow longer again.

It seems so much harder to keep up the making momentum on these dark and cold days. Hopefully we might get the workshop heating system fixed this week which would certainly help.


The weekend brought a feast for eyes and ears, with the beautiful low winter light on the estuary in the afternoons followed by evenings of song with the Feral Choir's performances of 'Forgotten Carols' and winter readings.


These are some of the dishes I made using the new slab roller. I dug out one or two press moulds that I were old favourites - ones that had survived the Autumn blitz and it was a joy to roll wonderful huge uniform slabs and flop them in.


It was lucky that I had kept a few of these moulds, as I had no sooner finished the GRAND CLEAROUT when was promptly asked to make another version of this oval dish to replace a broken one from several years ago. I used the cat chase design again, as it seemed to fit the shape rather well and they wanted something feline.

Then I had a last minute order for another school teachers retirement presentation gift. Same school as last time in fact and they wanted a similar, but different design. I used a square dish press mould which I had fortunately decided to hold onto.

The moto of the school is 'Reach for the stars' and I was to portray the old building.

Oh my goodness, I shall have to double my prices if anyone asks for a BUILDING again. They are not my forte, and I spent ages on this one. It came out well, I have to admit, but all those windows....

So at last all my Christmas orders are completed and posted off or collected. I can start to think about what is round the corner for next year. One thing I know is that I will be doing the 'Earth and Fire' show in Rufford again. I was selected this time! Amazing, (I had sort of given up on that one as it seems so hard to get in to), exciting and a bit scary too. It's going to be a busy Spring...