Rock forms

Having spent a lot of time on beaches and in the mountains, I have had plenty of opportunity to get close up and intimate with rocks that have been eroded by water (waves and waterfalls). I wanted to create a ceramic sculpture based on this erosion of rock, especially the hollows in rock which are formed when a stone is swirled around by the water; my starting point for this project was the following sketches.

As with most of my ceramic work, I made the piece at home and then took it to college to use the kiln; always a risky business as clay is most fragile in 'greenware'. When driving to college with this large piece (securely wrapped in bubblewrap) in the boot of my car, I was forced to do an emergency stop when someone stepped in front of the car. I successfully avoided hitting the pedestrian, but heard an ominous thump from the boot! On arriving at college, I found that the piece had managed to fall over and the top section was completely shattered. Fortunately the majority of the piece was intact, so with the use of file and sandpaper I smoothed off the broken edges and painted the interior with black slip before putting my modified design in for firing, here is the result.

Rock Form (1) with sea-glass (~32cm)

If I am totally honest, I think the piece looks better in its modified form.
One lesson learned from this experience is to transport my work with its centre of gravity at its lowest point.
I have made two more smaller pieces also based on rock forms.

Rock Form (2) with sea-glass (~25cm)

Group of Rock Forms

Wire and bead work

Having successfully made hearts using silver wire this led on to being a little more ambitious and to making some stars and trees to use as Christmas decorations.

Silver wire and bead Christmas decorations (~8cm)

On a much smaller scale I made myself a pair of ear-rings, but this was very fiddly so I have only made one pair so far.

Silver wire and bead ear-rings (~2cm)

For the garden I made a large spiders web; the spider and the fly were bought from Chi-Africa Ltd who use recycled metal to make their sculptures.

Wire and bead spider's web (~50cm)

After lunching with a friend who collects dragonflies (not real ones!), I realised that my wire-wrapping method could probably make an effective dragonfly wing and that I could then mount the wings on a suitable piece of driftwood, and so my dragonflies were hatched.

Dragonfly, wire, bead and driftwood (~30-cm wingspan)

Impressions

When walking the dog I enjoy collecting grasses, leaves and seedheads to use to impress into clay, such as my Houseleek planters. I have also made a series of small tiles using a variety of natural materials to impress into the surface of the clay. I then wired together the tiles and hung them from one of my many pieces of driftwood to create the wall hanging shown below.

Seed impressed wall hanging (25x47cm)

I also made a few small hangings, which sold straight away.

With ferns being one of my favourite plants it is not surprising that I often use parts of the plants to embellish my work. In the small hangings above I impressed both parts of tree fern fronds and new unfurling fern fronds to decorate the tiles. I have also used fern fronds to decorate some large platters.

Fern leaf platters (~30cm)

Planters

One of the genus of plants that intrigue me is that of the Sempervivum, often know as 'Houseleek'. I had started collecting these and required an interesting way to plant and display them, hence the following range of planters.

Planter with seed impressions (1) (~25cm diameter)

 My original planter with Houseleeks has survived happily in the garden during the last two cold and snowy winters and the Houseleeks have been busy multiplying.

Planter with seed impressions (2) (~25 cm diameter)

Planter with carved spirals (1) (~25cm)

Planter with seed impressions (3) (~25cm)

Planter with carved spirals (2) (~25cm)

Garden features

For many years I have wanted a water feature in the garden; I designed a pebble pool water feature in 2005 as part of my study for the Diploma in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture but had not actually put this design into use in the garden partly due to the cost of the large drilled boulder required. Now that I was creating a variety of ceramics items I decided to design and produce a large ceramic ball to use instead of the original planned boulder; here is a sketch of my design.

Here is the large ceramic ball which I made using the above sketch

The next challenge was dig up more of the garden to create instal the water feature; over the years we are gradually having less grass in the garden as I create more planting spaces, at least it means less mowing!
Here is the water feature up and running, I hid the top of the water pipe using one of my first small birds.

The garden is a great place for installing some of my larger ceramic works. One of these came about because we were given a large concrete bird bath which my husband decided would make an excellent plinth for a ceramic sculpture, so I rose to the challenge and made the sculpture shown below.

Spiral sculpture (~40cm height)

I also made a large carved stone to add to the pebble area around the water feature.

Carved stone (~30cm diameter)

No doubt more ceramic items will find their way into the garden to nestle amongst the plants.

Boxes & Pots

I love finding bargains so can often be found hunting through the local charity shops. One very valuable find was the book 'Ceramics Manual, A Basic Guide To Pottery Making' by Graham Flight; a book which is no longer in print and a search on Amazon gives the lowest price for a secondhand copy at nearly £11 (inc delivery). So my purchase at £4 was a bargain, especially since the book has provided me with so much valuable advice and inspiration.
The book gave me the idea to make boxes with a curvy lids

Curvy lidded box (~10cm)

I then moved on to making small egg shaped pots

 This then led to making small pots with handles made from small pieces of driftwood and Paua shell

 and to experimenting with 'sea-glass' in a heart-shaped impression in the lid

Pot with 'sea-glass' heart (~7cm)

Also to slightly larger pots in which the original spherical shape was beaten to a 'square' or 'triangle' form

 When my sister requested a garlic storage pot for her Christmas present I instantly knew there was only one shape in which to make this!

Garlic pot (~20cm)

More of these are already in production as a friend has already ordered two!

Birds

In the summer of 2009 I experimented in creating small birds formed by joining together two pinch pots to make an egg shape and then 'pulling out' the shape of tail and beak. My first attempt can be seen in the left of the photo below.

On the second bird, I refined  (and improved) the shape, and since then have made (and sold) a lot of these birds in various sizes.

Birds (~10cm & 6cm tall)

As these birds are hand made each one is slightly different, but all are highly tactile, asking to be picked up and caressed.