Falling leaves – ceramic wall art

When we moved into this house I decided that I didn’t want anything near the windows that would distract from the view so I went for plain walls and simple blinds.

But for some time I’ve wanted to make something to hang in the corner that would add interest but not overwhelm. I wanted to connect the outside and the inside in some way.

So while I had the raku kiln out I made ‘Falling Leaves’ wall art. These are made with the heavily grogged clay , I used some brushed on as slip to roughen up the surface. This has worked really well adding texture to the leaves once glazed.

Some of the leaves have amazing colour.

The beauty of raku is you are never quite in control, I’m sure I didn’t use these colour glazes.

I thought this leaf was less interesting so I gave it some faux water droplets.

Here’s how they look all together, I’m really pleased with them.
Spacing the leaves was a bit problematic even though I tried them out on the floor and measured the spacing. Never mind, out came the polyfilla. I’m still not sure about the spacing, I might add a couple more small leaves. I have a kiln full of leaves bisque firing today as I’m certainly going to add these to my range of products. I’m so pleased with how these turned out, and they make me smile.

More Raku Bowls

I managed to get another raku firing done last week, in between the days of torrential rain. I have been waiting eagerly to fire up the kiln again but the weather has been so bad this summer.

I made several pieces including these 3 bowls which are a little experiment. The one on the left is the heavily grogged raku clay, the middle bowl is this same clay but with a layer of stoneware slip on top which makes it look a lot smoother. The bowl on the right is a new clay for me, it’s Ashraf Hanna’s raku clay.
I wanted to see how they fair during the firing process.
This is the one on the left after firing
The middle pot with the slip has an interesting crackle effect

And the Ashraf Hanna one, I think for bowls this is my preferred clay but I will tell you about a project involving the heavily grogged clay in my next post.
Also my daughter is home so she has had a play on the wheel and these are her pots after firing. Very wabi sabi, with some lovely colours.

So this raku firing was a success, I think I’ve cracked it ( or not cracked my pots) 🙂

I got up early this morning to list a few of my raku bowls in my Etsy shop.

Making flavoured gin and ceramic components.

It’ supposed to be summer, but you already know if you live here, the British weather is so unpredictable and this summer has been a bit of a wash out. That does mean everything in the garden is lush and green, my apple crop is better than ever.

I do love the smell of lavender in the garden, it’s time to make some flavoured gin. When I was last in Norfolk I had the best G&T ever, it was so very fragrant  and there was a definite hint of lavender; well Norfolk is famous for lavender.

I decided to have a go at making my own lavender scented gin after reading an article on Craft Gin Club website

Instead of starting with vodka I decided to start with a cheap gin, so it has some botanicals already. Lavender flowers, rosemary, and bay leaf from my garden were added to the bottle along with some black peppercorns, coriander seeds and juniper berries from my spice cupboard. The bottle was shaken from time to time, and tasted daily. It took 3 days before I thought it was ready for drinking.

You can definitely keep your Pimms, lavender gin served on ice with tonic water, lemon and a few juniper berries is definitely my taste of summer.

I have managed to spend a couple of days in the garden making and glazing ceramic jewellery components, I decided to make earthenware components this time as I wanted bright jewel colours. I love these bright glazes and my customers love them.

Enjoy what’s left of the summer , I hope you have sunshine wherever you live.

Cheers !

A trip to Potfest and making lemonade

Yesterday I had a trip to Potfest, I had a great time, saw some amazing work  and met a few potters whose work I have bought over the years so that was nice.  I was able to buy a few supplies including glaze for my dinner set.

One of the most amazing things I saw was a 3 D printer making pots. I have some of Joan Hardie’s work already; I was amazed to see her work going in a totally different direction these days. It was a fascinating process to watch, and Joan’s ceramic pieces were exquisite, like intricate, translucent, almost eggshell like forms in the most beautiful and intriguing shapes. If you would like to see Joan and Jack’s work they have a website which explains how their pots are printed.

After the raku firing I had last week, when all my pots cracked, it was my good fortune to watch a raku demonstration, and the chap ( I forget his name) gave me some great advice as to why my pots may have cracked, I think I knew where I had gone wrong already but he confirmed this, and gave me some tips too.

These are my cracked pots, although disappointed I’m not too bothered as I’m just getting the hang of firing with the gas torch, you need to get a feel for it, and I did get some fantastic colours on these pots. What you can’t see is how the colours sparkle and shimmer in the light.
So what do I do with my cracked pots? It seems such a shame to throw them out.

I had another minor disaster last week when I broke a piece off one of my greenware pots, but after a bit of filing, and drilling a couple of holes  I have turned it into one of my favourite bowls to date. A lovely noodle bowl, I need to make some more of these now.
I love this glaze and so I bought a large tub of it from Sedgefield Pottery when I was at Potfest, I think it could be the one for my dinner set, but I may do some test fires on mixing glazes before I decide.

I feel I have learned so much this week, I know there is a long journey ahead of me, but that’s the fun of it, and why I’m going down this path. Happy days !

Raku progress

The new raku glazes arrived, and the weather looked promising so we decided to have another attempt at raku firing last weekend.

This was the second attempt since making the raku kiln, this time the firing was far more successful.

The first pots didn’t have a lot of metallic  colour, but at least I could see that the dry brushed glaze and smoke blackened the cracks did exactly what I hoped for. I did wonder if this pot would survive as I thought the texture may have weakened the pot.

The second firing was far more successful, the kiln got quite a bit hotter and the posts were glowing red and sticky when they went into the combustibles. This one has some nice oil slick colours.

I did the happy dance when I lifted the bucket lid to find this lovely raku pot.I made a little video to show all the colours and how they change in the light.

I’m going to have to wait at least a week for the next raku firing as it’s set for rain all week, but I will get my pots glazed and ready to go.

July review, mountains climbed

And so another month has flown by, it seems I have shown most of my makes this month already, but there is something going on.

I have continued building on my meditation technique and I feel I’ve made a breakthrough. I know meditation is about letting go, allowing the mind to go blank. However it’s not so easy to do in practice, thoughts do come and go. What I find really interesting is how these thoughts relate to my creative self.

I have a metaphor for how I see the way my creative mind works, it’s a pin table. The ball, the ideas that bounce around my head, the bell sounds and the lights flash with an idea, then I bounce off onto another idea. It can be quite exhausting, and that’s how I came to meditation in the first place, I was starting to feel stressed. Now I realise I need to slow the pace of creative thinking down a bit and spend more time with each idea.

Remember I climbed a real mountain this month, I’d been putting off going up Scafell Pike for so long, I didn’t think I could do it, but it was actually much easier than I thought. Climbing this mountain has helped me with a creative mountain, and so I started throwing a dinner set.

I want 8 place settings so I decided to make 10 of everything as some might be lost along the way. I have wanted to do this since I got the wheel but it seemed too big a mountain for me to climb.

Ten bowls and 10 mugs thrown.
Plates, drying nicely, these are slab rolled and finished on the wheel.

This morning’s meditation has left me with a clear vision of where I’m heading, I realise that everything I do and love influences my work. So where am I heading?

I will tell you later 🙂

 

 

Northumberland Coast and Castles

There is no better place to spend a few days in the summer than the Northumberland coast. Northumberland has more castles than any other county in England, many of which are strategically positioned on the coast. The number of castles is due to the Border Wars from 14th to 16th centuries.

This is Alnwick castle which is the home of Percy family, the famous Henry ‘Harry Hotspur’ Percy was born here in 1364.

Alnwick castle has stone figures along the battlements, apparently this was the fashion in the 1300’s and other Northumbrian castles had them. Alnwick castle is probably more famous now for being used as the set for the Harry Potter films.

Some of the castles are now just ruins, like Dunstanburgh castle. Looking very dramatic from Newton beach, which is a lovely sandy cove, a great place for a walk before crab sandwiches for lunch at the local pub.

Bamburgh castle was the seat of the King’s of Northumberland , in 1465 the castle fell during the Wars of the Roses. It was restored to it’s former glory by Lord William Armstrong who lived at Cragside.

The castle dominates the whole village of BamburghIt is a very quaint village and one of my favourite places to visit.

It has a wonderful long sandy beach, this view of the castle has been a backdrop in many films.Bamburgh was the birthplace of Grace Darling, or Grey Starling as I thought she was called when I came here on a school trip when I was about 7. Grace lived with her father, the lighthouse keeper on Longstone, which is one of the Farne Islands.

During a storm Grace saw the wreck of the Forfarshire on some rocks, she and her father rowed out and rescued the survivors. Grace’s act of great courage resulted in her becoming very famous, this is where she is buried in the churchyard in Bamburgh.

These are pictures of some of the Farne islands, including Longstone.

Bamburgh castle from the beach. If the sun is out there are no finer beaches in the country, although the sea is always cold.

It’s a lovely, if not bracing place for a walk, but I have been sand blasted when the wind picks up.

I hope you have enjoyed your visit to some of Northumberland’s coastal castles, Northumberland has about 70 castles in all so it’s a great place to visit.

Creative time with friends

Some good karma came back at me last week, aren’t these flowers gorgeous. Also our friends came over for a few days, I love our time spent together.

The weather was set fair so we did our planned firings first, saggar pots were prepared in the usual way, a couple had some copper sulphate instead of ferric chloride.

We got some interesting effects, the whiter ones have the copper sulphate on them. 

The raku firing had mixed results, Tom’s pot  came out the best with some lovely copper oil slick colours. 

And a lovely green and copper insideThese  pots were less successful, I have put it down to the old glazes which I reconstituted, they started cracking off before the bowls even got into the kiln. The green glaze was a new one and gave much better results. However there were some lovely colours on these pots so I think the firing process was probably ok.
We sat and waxed up our pots over a glass of wine, the wax brings out the colours
There are some interesting green areas on the copper sulphate pot, I think I might try a saturated solution next time.

We had worked hard and felt quite hungry, I made a tapas style meal served in my little bowls, it’s the first time they have all been used together. Do you remember the salad bowl that I made, and we had berries from the berry bowl for pudding.

Jean makes the most adorable needle felted animals , this is her dog collection, after dinner we set to work making a little terrier, maybe we were tired or had too much wine, mine eventually started looking more like a hare, which is what I hope it will turn into one day but I have put it to one side for now, my mind is on pots…………lots and lots of pots, I have started making a dinner set so we can eat off my dishes next time friends come over. More about that in another post.

Ceramic lamp with handmade shade

Ceramic lamp with handmade shade.

My lampshade kit arrived yesterday, if you  remember I made a textural lamp base and I wanted an oval shade for it. I thought making it myself would finish the lamp off perfectly.

I have made a lampshade before and it was very satisfying to do. The kit arrived but I was a little concerned about the creases in the linen fabric, I should have known really, linen is always creased. After an awful lot of steam ironing I thought, just give it a go and see what happens. Fortunately when it was stuck onto the backing the slight creases didn’t show.

OH wired up my lamp base for me , I knew already where it would go, on the hall tables, under my Arnold Lowrey painting. It looks great there.

Here’s a closer look, I think the simple shade works really well with the textured base.
I seem to have a thing for making table lamps, I would like to make another one with a rusty look, and I know the perfect spot for it. 🙂

My conflict between perfection and the not so perfect.

As I continue to learn how to throw pots on the wheel I have come to realise there’s conflict going on in my head.

I’m sure anyone who throws pots will, like me, be striving for perfection. I am loving this challenge and the journey will take me for ever.

However there is a conflict going on in my head and I know it’s been going on for a long time, not just since I got my wheel. I love clean lines and contemporary design but I also love rustic too. I love hand building and wonky pots, the urge to pick them up and connect with them is so very strong. So there you have my conflict.

I guess I will continue to love both, I will continue to strive for perfection in my thrown pieces and continue making wabi and sabi hand built pieces, I  have strong urges to ‘alter’ my thrown pieces so maybe the two styles will meet somewhere, who knows. It’s enough to have fun just making.

Here’s a couple of pieces that came out of the kiln this morning, a salad bowl and a berry bowl.

The salad bowl is thrown, it has a couple of issues I need to address, it has warped a bit and the glaze has some minute pinholes, so I will strive to perfect these issues at my next attempt to make the perfect bowl.

The berry bowl is hand built, while making this I imagined it sitting on the kitchen table at Cragside  and maybe a kitchen maid stealing one of the berries. It’s really quite wonky in shape but I like that in hand built ceramics, I just want to pick it up and steal a strawberry myself.

I quite like the idea of not really knowing where my journey is going, who knows I may end up somewhere in the middle, only time will tell.