Shhhh, don't scare them. . .

I spotted these wee monkeys having a little huddle this morning when I got to work. I obviously caught them unawares I wonder what they were planning. The lesser trailed salt pigs, they're rare around these parts.

Crazy plate, I really enjoyed decorating that this morning. This afternoon I met with a great lady from the Cultural Enterprise Office which is the organisation in Glasgow that we have lost our lovely Helen to. It was a pretty informative meeting, I always find it useful to discuss ideas with someone, a sounding block you know.

I had some sad news this morning that a friend of mine had just died. He wasn't someone that I knew overly well but I am friends with him and his lovely wife because of our mutual slipware obsession. He has been very ill for a while but it is still very sad. I was hoping that I would have gotten the kiln built in time for him to come and see it but I have been too slow it seems and for that I am sorry.

Paul is due home tonight he's been away in France for a few days another spy mission I assume, it's a hard life. I've been baking chocolate brownies for him but I had a brownie mix : baking tin ratio problem, too much mix which really isn't bad a problem of course but set me in a tizz trying to find something else to grease and fill with chocolate goo.

Wildlife upate

The wildlife count today has been as follows:

three hares (two about to start boxing or just finishing and shaking hands I wasn't quite sure)
one heron
two buzzards
a million and three pheasants
and a sweet sweet little fellow who stuck his head around the open door of my workshop and seemed very surprised to see me there, ever so beautiful he was, long and slim with short legs and a long tail and with a white chin and chest. I should have been able to tell what it was because of course weasels are weasily recognised and stoats are stoatally different.

A long tale.

I had a chat with my friend Christine today who told me off for not having mentioned something on here that I should have. I hadn't mentioned it because although I was thrilled to bits when I got the letter on friday afternoon I feel a bit odd talking about it because it feels like I'm blowing my own trumpet too much. Anyway here it is:

A good few months ago now, crikey I can't even remember when it was but probably August ish I decided that I would apply to the Craft Potters Association to see if they would let me join as a professional member. The first stage you send images of your work and a brief bit of information about what you do and how you learnt. Oh how I agonised over which pictures to send, took me ages to decide - thanks Helen for your patience! The CPA Council then look at the images and make a decision as to whether to get you to bring your pots to them for assessment. So just before Christmas I had a letter saying yes we would like you to bring six pots to London in February. February arrived along with Hannah having many a trauma and change of mind over which pots to take. Does one mug look too silly on it's own or would a pair be better? Do I take some of the Birdie range or would that be too commercial? Does the lid on that casserole fit better than the lid on the other casserole? Is it too traditional a shape? Is that a bad thing? (There's a whole other blog post there, remind me about that some other time.) Should I take a lettered piece or a commemorative piece? Is two sgraffito and four slip trailed a good balance? Oh endless questions and procrastinations. Thank you Helen again for yet more patience, is it any wonder the poor girl has moved to Glasgow? Then on top of that I was going down on the train I certainly didn't fancy the 365 mile each way drive thank you very much. So how do I carry these breakable not particularly light weight things, I decided to take one of my big oak tree chargers too just to make life more interesting. Amanda lent me a wheelie suitcase which was great and I concocted a rather fetching cardboard plate carrier with shoulder strap for the charger.

So I had to take the pots to a particular place by 9.30 on the saturday morning and I remember thinking when I booked the tickets ages ago how nice it would be to have a day in London on the friday to have a wander around and see some exhibitions and I honestly thought I had booked the tickets for just that reason to go on the thursday. I discovered on the tuesday I think it was when I was fishing out the tickets so that I was ready that they were actually booked for the friday so that was a bit of a swine. I can only assume that I had thought the £19 ticket was too good to miss. What happened that week though? Well it didn't happen here but the rest of the country was brought to a stand still by the snow. Typical, I was really worried about being suck half way there on a train in a snow drift. All afternoon on the thursday here I kept watching the weather. I thought that if it started to snow I would go down to Dumfries then and stay with my sister overnight and then at least I would be able to walk to the station as I was worried about being snowed in out here. I'd look up and see some snowflakes and think right if it's still snowing in fifteen minutes then I'm going now, then it'd stop. Talk about tense!
It still didn't snow here and I got the train all fine and dandy and got to London AOK and I stayed with Annabel again which was great though I saw precious little of her as my trip was so short. I had booked a train out of London at about 4pm on the saturday up to Sheffield to Paul's mum's 80th party. There's nowt like cramming it all in.
I found the right place no problem on the saturday morning but how annoying can those wheelie suitcase things be when the start up a little wobble and it just gets bigger and bigger till the damn thing is fair dancing along the road behind you and wrenching your shoulder because of the weight in it, there's nothing else to do but stop and gently oh so gently start again.
It was an odd experience if I am quite honest. I had been warned though so at least I was prepared for oddness. There were I think six of us there applying and we went into a lecture room of the university, laid out our pots on tables and were told to amuse ourselves elsewhere for three hours. Then we came back and packed up our pots and that was that. I thought it was bizarre that we weren't really spoken to, and the process wasn't explained. It was quite as I say, odd. After the selection, as we were all packing away the Council was waiting to start their meeting and the couple of people who I had met before did come and have a chat which I was very grateful for as it made the whole thing a bit less intimidating. I just thought it strange that people could travel all the way to London to show their work and not be asked about it, one girl had set off at 3.30am to be there by 9.30am. I'd have been even more terrified if I had had to speak but I thought it would have been interesting both to us as applicants and to the selectors to hear from each other.
So after that I left my trusty wheelie case at the left luggage area in Kings Cross station where it was scanned through an x-ray machine. That was great,I wanted to take a picture but I thought they might think I was some sort of weird terrorist suspect person if I did so I didn't. It came up on the screen with x-rays of all my pots, fantastic, the harvest jug I had taken had really even walls, I was quite pleased. I spent a couple of hours then at the City of London Museum which had some tasty pots and chatted to a researcher lady who's aunt has a couple of Lucy Rie pots at her house. Like you do. Then I made my way north to Sheffield to the party while trying as hard as I could to stay awake so that I didn't miss my stop and the man at the side of me didn't stay awake and his head kept hitting my shoulder as he nodded off.
Anyway at the end of that epic story I got a letter on friday saying that yes I had been offered Professional Membership of the CPA. I did some crazy la-la-la-ing and bouncing around the workshop and singing to myself as there was no-one else around to tell at the time and kept laughing out loud for the rest of the afternoon. I did text Paul Young who sent his congratulations from a train ride somewhere in deepest darkest India. I'm very pleased but it does feel a bit weird saying it I'm not boasting, just very pleased.
There you go Christine, I've done it!

Mad flowers and a Flat Cat

As from today a selection of my pots will be on show at The Flat Cat Gallery in Lauder in the Scottish Borders. I am reliably informed that at the moment you can also see and buy the work of the fabulous Paul Young in the very same gallery.

There is some work going on at the workshop but it all seems a bit disjointed and things seem to be taking a long time to get finished. I did decorate this slightly mad plate today and some pasta bowls and vases for the Newby Hall shop as mentioned in the last post.

This week I have been mostly. . .

. . . Moving wood, lots of wood, and stacking it to dry. It's very green so it might be burnable this time next year. Some of it isn't split as much as I'd hoped so that stuff might get chopped into stove sized pieces and then split. Anyhow it's a start.

I was doing more wood shifting today while Paul was moving around a lot of hardcore and building a wooden frame for the concrete to be poured into. A little bit more moving to be done and filling in of gaps but maybe concrete next weekend weather permitting. Paul bless him has worked solidly all day, you can't tell from the picture just how much stuff needed digging and levelling and sorting but he deserves a big hug for it all and something to ease his aching back no doubt.

I've been asked to make some saltpigs for a gallery that I supply in Ripon, they are opening a new shop at Newby Hall and would like some work for there too. I haven't made salt pigs for a while and I remembered the great idea that Alan Gaff once published on his blog a while ago and thought I'd give it a go. This one does the thing that I hate on saltpigs in that the mouth isn't vertical so any dust dropping from above is still able to fall into the opening of the jar, however excluding that fact which just requires a bit of tweaking on the cutting process I think it works well, so much easier than the way I would usually make them. I'll see what it looks like decorated but I will be trying it again, thanks Alan!

These two pictures are some sample that I have been working on for a project that I may be involved in in the future. It's based on the Cumnock Pottery that I mentioned a few posts back. I was trying to reuse the naive style of drawing and lettering that appears on the old Cumnock pots.

Last night was Helen's leaving party, she's moving away to Glasgow and we will miss her oh so very much. I can report that the cake and chocolate lollipops went down well.

PS A quick message to my regular Anonymous commenter, hope you are ok, haven't heard from you in a while.

It's much harder with chocolate

Chocolate cake with chocolate butter icing and chocolate decoration.

Chocolate lolly pops. I just hope they stay on the sticks until I get them there.

Guest decorator

Today my friend Zoe Blamire from The McGill Duncan Gallery in Castle Douglas came to visit as she really wanted to try her hand at decorating a pot. I like these guest pot decorators that I'm having at the moment, it's good fun. I think Zoe really enjoyed herself, she tried trailing and sgraffito and with her background of cake decorating and drawing she was a natural.
As a little aside, I'm going to a party on friday, do you think that it would be possible to take too much chocolate based food to a leaving party for a girl who adores chocolate?

Magic!

Remember this?
Now they look like this. . .

The two plate sheets of fused coloured glass have been dropped in the kiln through ceramic moulds (by Amanda, not sure on the temperature but the programme requires many more stages than my controller will do) which has stretched and thinned the glass and the patterns that I had engraved on it. I like them much better now, they are so very different. At the moment they don't sit upright as their little bottoms are not flat but are nice and round and have a lot of pattern across them. I think the idea is that I might make some little holders for them to sit in. They are about 7cm high to give you an idea of scale.

I engraved a couple more sheets this afternoon which I have managed to forget to take a photo of. I felt I had a much better idea this time now that I have seen what happens. Amanda has done a lot of engraving on the glass before but I think usually only does that after the forms have been created. Amanda had a go at throwing today, her first shot was for an audience as I suddenly got some visitors. I don't have pics of the results either but she certainly does, hopefully they'll be on her blog shortly. I'm really enjoying this different way of working. I've never had anyone else work in my studio for any time before so it's odd when you say something out loud and actually get a reply that isn't just in your own head!

Well I have to do it now. . .

Some of Amanda's tiles were in the last firing. She hasn't seen them yet, I think they have come out a treat. She'll be round again tomorrow for another session.

Sgraffito of black through white slip, I think I can make some more of this.

More new mugs.

So yes I have to do it now because . . . I now have a big pile of wood, stacked up and ready to dry out and am very tired from shifting it all into lovely neat piles today.

Love / hate relationship

I have a love / hate relationship with my glaze. When it's good it's fine and when it's bad it's beautiful. Let me explain, at my normal temperature (you probably already know this from my past problems with the kiln etc) it's fine, it melts well, makes a good colour (until recently when it's been getting a bit less honey and a bit more yellow which I don't like and am not sure how that happened) and is pretty durable for an earthenware glaze. Any lower and it's dull, no gleam and just looks a bit sickly. Just that bit higher and it's delicious, so warm and deep and lovely it makes me drool. However at the just higher than normal temperature it also shimmers. Humph!

I would love to get it so that I can take it just that bit higher, the black slip almost melts under the glaze and it's lovely. So what do I do? I have been trying to get my head round this for ages. Obviously I don't want to alter the recipe too much. These bowls in the picture above are glazed in a slight tweak to my normal glaze, more clay less lead. I was hoping that would put the colour back to how it was but it has if anything gone a bit darker and it doesn't sing to me as I would like it too.

I'm getting a bit concerned over what I will use in the wood kiln as that is going to be less even in temperature, more variable isn't it so I'd like to make my glaze more tolerant if possible. Not too much to ask is it?

I unpacked the kiln today, lots of glazed pots, some ok, some fab colour but shimmered on the rims. Oh it makes me mad!

A soppy version of naughts and crosses as a little present for a certain someone in my house for tomorrow. I know, sickening isn't it. Pass the bucket.

Slip trailing in action!

I wonder if this is a progression of my Birdie range, maybe this is what's left behind after the bird has gone off on his mission.

Today I thought I would attempt to take some pictures of me trailing some decoration as it has been requested a few times.

This is one of my big chargers being oak-tree-y-fied. Here I'm using the black slip with a fine nozzle to draw the outlines.

Infilling the leaves with cobalt slip which goes a pleasing green under the glaze.

Here is the finished thing.

And just as a special treat, here's a bit of a video, not sure how good it is or what I was saying or even if you can hear the afternoon play on Radio 4. I took a couple more so I might drip feed them to you.

Oh me oh my I've gone and bought some wood, rather a lot of wood. Yikes!

Cumnock Pottery

Over the new year we visited the Dumfries Museum, I think I mentioned it at the time. I was looking at the two or three pieces of Cumnock pottery that they have there which is a slipware pottery made up in Ayrshire just north of here. I have found some slipware made up on the east coast of Scotland too but this Cumnock ware is more often come across.

A couple of weeks ago now I was contacted by a lady regarding Cumnock Pottery and Dumfries House (also in Ayrshire, not in Dumfries) coincidence eh? Anyway I've been having a closer look at the Cumnock pots recently and I thought you might like to see them. Very much a gift sort of pottery I think the area was a popular holiday destination back in the late 19th early 20th Century. The pottery was made from 1792 through to 1920 but the pots with the mottos which I think are the most famous weren't made until the 1830s.

So there you go. There is a website called Future Museums which is based on the contents oft he museums of South West Scotland, it has only been started recently but is planned eventually to contain the entire collections of these museums. It has quite a few images of Cumnock Ware there.

More slippy bowls.

Look at these fabulous foot prints, great journey to work this morning, I walked down as the roads were far too icy for a bike (I got about 10 meters before I realised it was so slippy) there were so many different foot prints along the road and the verges. I know we will have deer, foxes, hares and pheasants but there were a couple that I didn't have a clue about. These above are pheasants, they found themselves onto my pots this afternoon while I was decorating.

Wedding plate, I like the tree stretching over onto the rim rather than being completely confined by the banding. I usually put the banding on first but this time I left it till after I had done the lettering and the tree. It made the lettering a bit more difficult to judge but I am very pleased with the result.

Fresh new bowls

and lots of them.

I packed the kiln this morning for a bisque with the smallest of this shape of bowl that I had decorated last week, I am looking forward to having them out to see what they feel like to hold and to eat out of. There are also some mugs in there, a couple of big jugs and some of the pieces that Amanda decorated. I need to try out a glaze test on some pieces too when I fire the next glaze load, I have forgotten for the last few months. I have them on small test tiles but I'll do some on real pots this time hopefully.

We have snow!

I just love snow, we drove back from Sheffield this afternoon over the A66 which amazingly was open being has been shut this week because of the thick snow. It's a pretty exposed road up there but the fields and trees full of snow just looked fantastic.

By the time we got to Dumfries the snow was falling and starting to stick. By the time we got back to the house oh fabulous white fluffy stuff everywhere. I love it, we had to go out and have a play and a bit of a snowball fight of course.

So, Sheffield and back safely and without getting stuck in the snow. The party was what you could call a roaring success with many energetic and enthusiastic octogenarians having a whale of a time.

Wet slip and hopefully no snow.

Lots of freshly slipped mugs and little bowls left on the shelves to dry tonight and the heater most definitely left on it's anti frost setting. About minus 3 degrees C when I left the house to go to work this morning. Similar forecast for tonight.

Off to Sheffield for the weekend as it is Paul's mum's 80th birthday this weekend.

Happy Birthday Faith!

As much as I adore the snow and have been a bit sad not to have had any when the rest of the country seems to have much of it, I hope there is none here tomorrow so that I can get away down to the railway station and so that the journey goes smoothly!

New pots.

Lots of throwing today, new bowl shapes, I'm really into new shapes and new decoration at the moment. I'm making in a way that I don't usually make. Usually I would throw batches of the same thing and decorate in batches of the same decoration to make sure that I can fulfil orders. Recently although I have been throwing batches of similar shapes the decorations have been all over the place and it's been really exciting. However I now have all these new shapes and patterns that I really like but as I'm away to a trade fair at the beginning of April I'm getting a little confused as to how to present them at the show in terms of I'm really excited by them and I want to show them but do I really want to make full ranges of all of these new things. I don't want to make all pots in all styles but I don't feel I can say to a shop yes you can have 20 mugs that shape but they'll be whatever patterns I feel like doing on the day?
What do you think?

Regular Service Resumed

Now at the risk of appearing totally unprofessional a question for you. . . Can you name the creatures that left the marks in these photos in the snow in Galloway yesterday? Not one little flake of snow today and I was very much looking forward to a good heap of it to play in. I love the feeling that snow brings as long as I don't have to get anywhere very far away for a certain time.

I think I might try tying two slip trailers together to see if I can recreate the trails above. Our local friendly game keeper popped in to the workshop yesterday morning and the first thing he said was "Did you have fun on your way to work this morning?" Yes you guessed it I did ride my bike in a slightly less straight line than usual all the way from home to work. It was great, it amused me to think that some people driving after me would wonder what had been going on and probably that some so intent on other things wouldn't even notice.

Thank you to all you commented on my post yesterday, there was a little more to the story but I felt it wasn't right to discuss the whole issue on here. Anyway you got the gist of it. Thank you for your support to all you regular commenters and to the lurkers who felt strongly enough to leave there comments.

I did a lot of throwing today and as a result was feeling rather achy by the time I got home. I had tried yesterday to throw a couple of my chargers but my mind wasn't fully on the job and I kept flopping the rims on them, today was much more of a success I'm pleased to say.

This one is mad isn't it, there were two similar ones in the farm yard when I arrived there, I have an incling as to what I think but I'll see what you all think before I tell you my ideas.

There was another issue regarding professionalism raised on the radio this morning while I was still tuned into BBC Radio 2. Apparently a course given to Bank of England staff by an outside agency, during the lunch break from what I can gather, stated that to be sucessful and to be taken as a serious professional, women must always wear high heels and make-up to work. I couldn't even bear to listen to all the discusion, Radio 4 was quickly saught. You can imagine my thoughts on that issue! It deserves no more comment from me.

Professional?

Due to a request I have removed my post from sunday. I felt I was highlighting an important exhibition in the Scottish calender but it has been suggested to me that by linking to it from my blog I could be seen to be making light of serious businesses.

I can't say I wasn't somewhat surprised by this comment as I feel I do my utmost to be as professional as possible within my business. I was as I say simply bringing peoples attention to an exhibition which if they were in the area they may wish to visit being as most visitors to this blog have an interest and appreciation of the visual and applied arts.

My blog is about pottery, my work and the things I make. I am not a machine so as a result the things that happen around me have a huge part to play in how I work and what I create. I felt that people who are interested in my pots might be interested in what it takes to get them to that finished state and by that I do not mean just the throwing, decorating and firing but the things that I see and experience that influence the forms and decoration and the way that I think that has an impact on the manner in which I work.

Apparently this sort of website is used by young girls who just want to chat. Now I do believe there are blogs out there like that but I must say I don't know any and I haven't read any. For me a blog is simply a tool which for me works as a straight forward, easy to update way for me to communicate what it is that is happening in my pottery. Again I don't keep up with them regularly but I know that a certain Mr Barrack Obama, The Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Mark Mardell the BBC's Europe Correspondent keep on-line blogs do they then fall into that category of unprofessional and just wanting to chat?

My style of writing is chatty and again the gist of the conversation was that this also makes it unprofessional. Yes, I agree whole heartedly it is chatty, it's me that is writing it and that is the way I am. I want people to be able to understand what it is I am trying to communicate. It's not that I am uneducated or dim, I don't use dozens of big serious words in my everyday conversations either, not because I don't know any but just because it's not me and I don't think I have to speak or write in multi-syllable words to be professional. I agree there are styles of writing for different occasions and hopefully the one I use here fits well with the purpose of my blog. I want what I do to be accessible to everyone. I don't want to upset or put people off with my use of language because I am too chatty or indeed because I am too unapproachable by what I write.

As a person I try to be patient and understanding, to give everyone and everything the attention and consideration that they deserve. I try not to disregard anyone else's practise though of course not every other art form appeals directly to me but I do try to consider the process, inspiration and reason behind other work. So as a result I am sorry to no longer advertise on this blog a particular event that I am very pleased and proud to have been selected for. I have chosen to remove the post because as I say I don't want to upset anyone or make anyone feel that I am in some way undermining the work of any person or group of people. That was not my intention and I am still unsure as to how I have managed to do that but there you have it.

As a friend just said, surely it's the content of the blog and not the format that is important.