Playfulness

With my work I decided some time again that I wanted to make playful work especially as we has limited time, so why make something serious and stagnant. It’s about make pots that contain energy and liveliness, which can be difficult in a medium that becomes “set in stone”. I can’t just hand a customer a soft clay pot and touch the fresh clay and let them feel how alive it is, and how the slightest movement can change its form, but I want to leave that impression that it was touched with hands and not just mass made to…

Watch this Space…

So I was going through some pots in storage a few weeks ago and pulled out this lidded jar. It really caught my eye and I can’t stop looking at it, it is one of the last things I made before my youngest child was born. I have a feeling something similar to this will be on the cards again. They give a good variety of surfaces to carve, decorate and play with and I would like to get them into a saggar too, perhaps with a bit less decoration and let the saggar do all the work.

Winchcombe Pottery

I have never been to see Winchcombe Pottery, so when I was visiting the Lighthearts earlier in July they suggested we should go on a trip there.  In case you don’t know much about their history click here, needless to say Michael Cardew reopened the country pottery in 1926 with the help of Elijah Comfort and Sydney Tustin. It was then taken over by Ray Finch in 1946 and was run by him and his family until the last year. It is now run by Matt Grimmitt who is the Great Great Grandson of Elijah Comfort. Entering the pottery they…

More Saggars

So this week I made some prototype saggar formers and saggars, I mixed my own clay with sawdust, grog from broken pots and some molochite for added strength.  Now if I didn’t have a deadline I would let them dry over two weeks, but I had a deadline so I force dried overnight and fired the next day so you will see some cracks in the larger saggar. Also if you want to make a saggar former don’t leave such big gaps as the clay can get stuck in them making the harder to remove.