Beachcomber

Whenever I spend any time on a beach, I always have my head down, seeing what treasures I can find. During our summer two week holiday in Pembrokeshire on one of our long walks along the fantastic coastline, we paused for lunch at Mill Bay on St. Anne's Head. Mill Bay is best known for the landing of Henry Tudor on 7th August 1485, having sailed from France with an army of 2,000 men. From Mill Bay they marched through Wales to defeat Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. More recently the Bay became the resting place for the wreck of HMS Barking. However it is not a beach known for a large collection of driftwood, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a potentialy interesting piece. Our dog was also interested in the wood, she could not understand why I was carrying the wood for the remaining few miles of the walk and not giving it to her to chew!
After coming home when the wood had dried out, I was able to set to work with my penknife and sandpaper, with this result....

Spiral Twist

Last year I made a large spiral sculpture for my garden, unfortunately several cracks appeared when firing this piece, which means I can't leave it out in the garden all year round.
Time to try to improve on this piece and make one without cracks.

SUCCESS!

Spiral Twist (~43cm)

Sgraffito

Sgraffito means scratching or drawing into clay - the term derives from the Italian graffiare, to draw. It is one of the commonest and most widespread decorative techniques, found in all ages and cultures. However, it is one technique which I had not dabbled in until recently.

During the Henley Arts Trail in early May I was very impressed by the work of Bronwen Coussens who uses Sgraffito to decorate her pots in a style very similar to the work of the printmaker Angie Lewin. I discovered Angie Lewin's work earlier this year and fell in love with her prints inspired by the structure of wild plants. Here is an example of one of her woodcut prints.




For my first attempt at using sgraffito, I made a couple of small heart bowls from terracotta clay, coated the insides with white slip, then 'doodled' with a pencil to reveal the terracotta clay beneath. I have now bought myself a proper sgraffito tool. After biscuit firing, I painted Persian Crackle glaze on the inside of the bowls and fired to Earthenware.

Sgraffito heart bowls (~8cm)

I also experimented by covering a sphere of white St. Thomas clay with several coats of black slip, then 4/5 coats of white slip, which I drew into to reveal the black slip (hard not to also draw through the black slip without a ball-end sgraffito tool). I finished by burnishing the sphere using the back of a teaspoon. When the piece was fired to Stoneware I was pleasantly surpised at how shiny it was, I had expected to need to polish with wax. I also liked the 'smokey' effect which burnishing with the metal spoon had given. A useful experiment.

Burnished sphere (~10cm)

My next stage was to use some of my plant sketches as the starting point for decorating some pots using sgraffito.

 I 'pinched' some small pots in terracotta clay and practised my technique, very pleased with these...

small Sgraffito vases (~8cm)

...time to make a larger vase based on my sketch shown above...

Koru Sgraffito Vase (19 x 13 cm)

I am continuing to develop this technique, as I am very pleased with my results to date.

Smoking!

Over the past few weeks I have been working with terracotta clay, having been inspired by some of the speakers at West Forest Potters.

This clay really lends itself to burnishing before the first firing. I find it very satisfying to sit rubbing a pot with the back of a teaspoon or a polished stone to bring the clay to a beautiful sheen, especially when there is a good play to listen to on Radio 4! After biscuit firing I then smoke the pot in the garden and finish by polishing with beeswax whilst still warm. I love the unpredictability of smoking, safe in the knowledge that if I do not like the result, I can either smoke again or put back into kiln and fire off the marks from the smoking.

Here are two new pots which I feel have come out very well from the whole process.

Smoked Vase (h~21cm, w~14cm)

Distorted Smoked Vase (h~14cm, w~11cm)

Ferns

A few weeks ago was one of my favourite times in the garden; as the new shoots of my many ferns emerge and start to unfurl. I took the opportunity to sacrifice some of the mature fern fronds by cutting some of the new shoots (koru) to use to impress into clay. I used 3 different sized moulds at college to make a large circular plate, a large rectangular platter and a small rectangular plate.  Into all of these I pressed a range of koru and fern fronds before biscuit firing. After this first firing I then used a combination of copper oxide to highlight the impressions and a mixture of glazes, before the final stoneware firing. I am very pleased with the results of the two large platters (small plate not fired yet).

Large fern plate (~32cm)

Large rectangular fern platter (~37x17cm)

Successful exhibition

Over the Bank Holiday weekend I exhibited 16 items of my ceramics work at the annual exhibition of West Forest Potters which was one of the venues on the Henley Arts Trail. The exhibition was full of wide variety of interesting work, and received many visitors each day. Not only did I receive a lot of very positive feedback for my work, but also sold 7 items (I had 2 items which were not for sale); always good to know that people like your work sufficiently to pay for it. However, it is sometimes hard to part with pieces which have been so enjoyable to make, such as my large 'Rock Form with sea glass'

Another piece which I would have quite liked to enjoy at home for a while was my recently produced  'Curled Leaf'

I also sold the following pieces:-

and two cream birds.
I am already planning what to be making ready for next year's exhibition!

Cupcake

A few weeks ago when chatting with our daughter in New Zealand, she jokingly suggested that I bake her a cake. After finishing our conversation I remembered seeing a knitting pattern for a cupcake and thought it would be amusing to knit her a cake to post to NZ. Having located the pattern, I needed to go shopping to buy the 2 circular needles and 3 balls of 4 ply wool. Hobbycraft was useless, so ended up in John Lewis spending quite a lot of money. I then needed to learn how to knit in the round using 2 circular needles; fortunately the book I had included clear instructions and good pictures, so I soon mastered this fiddly technique and was on my way knitting a cupcake! A few hours later it was completed, photographed and the next day posted to New Zealand.

I wish that I could have seen Katy's face when she opened the package; not quite the cake she had envisaged, but one that is good for the figure!
Having bought the needles and wool, and mastered a new knitting technique; I am now busy knitting more cupcakes ready to put on my stall at the Thrive Open Day on Saturday 12th May from 11.00am to 4.00pm. Do come if you can, not only is it an opportunity to see my work, but also you can enjoy the beautiful gardens at Thrive and sample some of the delicious cakes which the wonderful staff and volunteers make for these occasions.