Things on the beach on new years eve.

We walked down on the coast today, from Balcarry Bay to Rascarrel point. A beautiful day, there has been nothing but beautiful days here for a while, two weeks or so of icy temperatures but blue skies beyond belief and that lovely low winter sunshine.

I love the patterns that form in the ice though trying to walk up icy paths and roads I don't like so much. We climbed Screel the other day and it was like trying to walk up a glacier minus your crampons.

A washed up unicorn head, a common sight in theses parts

And then. . . . . the best find of the day which left me with fingers that lost all feeling and went pure white in no time but did end up with me having a lump of icy new wild clay sat here now which I can play with next year!

My Secret Santa came early to me, she didn't have far to travel and we were meeting at a carol service a couple of weeks ago anyway, it was from the lovely Christine and I now have a startled chuck mug to add to my Christine collection. Thanks Christine, hope yours arrives soon from who knows where.

So that's it really, a whole year and what a year. So much has happened, so many pots made, so many friends met and new friends made, so many blog posts written. 2010 is a whole new year, what will it bring of course we have no idea but all we can do is give it our best shot and what will be will be. Have a good New Years Eve if you are celebrating it and no doubt I'll see you in 2010.

The Heritage Crafts Association seeks input from craftspeople

The Heritage Crafts Association’s aim is to support and promote heritage crafts as a fundamental part of our living heritage. Since the HCA website went live earlier this year, we have attracted hundreds of supporters all keen to help ensure a sustainable future for traditional heritage crafts.

Going into 2010, we are looking to consolidate this support, building upon our advocacy work with politicians and representatives of key agencies. In order to achieve this, we would like to complement the huge amount of anecdotal evidence we have gathered to date with a statistical analysis of our supporters’ opinions and experiences. To that effect we are asking as many traditional craftspeople as possible in the UK to fill in a simple survey.

The survey consists of ten questions and should take no longer than fifteen minutes to complete. To do so, please go to www.surveymonkey.com/s/6FNQF6L.

We would also be very grateful if you could forward this notice to as many of your craftspeople friends and colleagues as possible, and, if you work for a crafts organisation, to post it in your newsletters and email circulars.

Many thanks in advance for your continuing support.
Robin Wood, HCA Chair.

Christmas Lights.

Check the house on the right for a chuckle.

Christmas Eve

Morning sun on the way down to work, I know I really shouldn't have been working the day but I do find it hard to resist.

I threw the tops on these jugs (blurry pic, sorry) and they are now under plastic and waiting for the new year to be finished off. I don't like the empty shelves when I go in in the new year so thought this year I would try having some things at different stages so I can get straight into them. There are some dishes ready to be slipped too.

I pressed this dish with a slab of clay that I had rolled and trailed yesterday. I usually opt for the thick layer of slip all over but end of year is a bit like the end of term at school so why not do something different. At school it was wear your own clothes day, at work it's brush your slip on day. I'm quite excited about it, tis very different for me. I was watching the crows playing on the snowy barn roof opposite yesterday so that's where the birdie came from this time.

Paul came to meet me at lunch time when I finished so we went off to find a suitable branch to be our tree. The tree is now up, the mince pies are baked, the presents are wrapped and I'm off for a soak in the bath with a good book and I will soon be smelling of roses courtesy of a bar soap made by Tig, which was supposed to be a gift but I kept it for myself.

Have a wonderful Christmas all. Enjoy yourselves and your families!

Last pots of 2009

The snow around us is about gone but the side roads like the one we live on are pretty grim.

Unpacked the kiln this morning for the last time of 2009, some lovely looking pots came out which is a good way to end the year.

I have been really enjoying just using black on white or vice versa this year and have used much less of the other colours in my work.

Another friendly dragon.

Oh and some slight craziness.

Cold? You bet!

This frost painting was on the kitchen window the other morning, Jack Frost has been reading my blog I think. It bears a striking resemblance to the plate with the two figures on that I slipped the other day.

It has been a slightly nippy day today, so nippy that my hair was solid by the time I got to work, it was frozen! Now I know what I'll look like when it goes gray.

Last week I had a ton of clay delivered and my ever helpful clay shifting elf gave me a hand to stack it all neatly inside. Thank you elf. I think the big pile of clay is why even though I have just packed the last glaze kiln of the year and tidied up the workshop and finished up my orders and it's only a couple of days to go to the Christmas holidays, that I felt the need to spend the entire day throwing pots.

I love the way that my footprints in the snow that leave the workshop door are all tainted slightly terracotta colour. Funny that.

Good news for the day, Paul is home! It may have been a bit of an epic journey but he is home to stay for a while which is great because he's been away a lot the last month or so. Light the fire and bring out the chocolate cake.

News

A couple of people have mentioned seeing a picture of my jugs in a magazine recently the picture was in the latest issue of Ceramic Review so thank you to those that did comment. It's always a bit of a surprise seeing my own pots in print, it doesn't generally happen that often, this one goes along with a caption about an exhibition called "Black and Gold" which is being held at The Platform Gallery in Clitheroe from the end of January next year. Here it is so that you can have a look if you haven't seen it (bottom right in case you wondered.)

While I'm feeling brave enough to blow my own trumpet a little bit the next little article has just appeared in the latest issue of Craft&Design Magazine which is the publication through which I won the silver ceramics award this year. They have produced a calendar showing the award winners and I appear with the other two ceramics winners as Miss July /August, at least a photograph of my pots does rather than me myself which would be a little scary and might not make you want to buy the calendar at all.

The last piece of news for the day is that I have been asked to write the "Diary of a Craftworker" for Craft&Design magazine for each issue of 2010. Angie Boyer the editor of the magazine says that they would like to "give our readers an insight into your creative world and what it involves... so I think my best advice is for you to just be yourself, that seems to be what works the best!" So that will be me writing a bit like I do on this blog I think except it gets printed and read by more people probably. Deep breaths, it's not that scary is it?

Just for anonymous

Guerilla snow trailing

How to mark pots?

Well I've been thinking and mulling this over for a long while now. Generally, since I started out on my own the pots have been signed as in the picture above with the pottery name and the year.

In the last year or so, occasionally, when I'm feeling brave, they get the treatment above if you can read it under the scrawl.

When I was doing my apprenticeship they got stamped with a little 'H' and Jason's pottery name. Now I am in a quandary. What should I do? I like the swirl of slip that I paint on but hmmm I'm not sure now. I like the stamp too and I know that pottery fans have a tendency to look for stamps on pots. More and more I am finding that I make almost two types of pots, the runs of tablewares and the bigger somewhat more individual pieces, this almost seems to need two different treatments. I started with the pottery name because at some point I want to take on an apprentice and in that case I felt I would need a pottery name, also what I wasn't expecting was that galleries and some customers want me and not the pottery if that makes sense. I also like to be able to date the pieces though it can be a bit odd having the odd thing that doesn't sell for a couple of years and hangs around sitting there with 2005 written on it.

So I was thinking a small stamp and maybe make a small change to it each year, maybe the addition of a dot or two but that could get quite complicated don't you think? I'd really like to know what you think.

A sad day today, the last ever of Radio 2's wonderful old geezer Sir Terry Wogan's breakfast show 'Wake up to Wogan' after something like 27 years. He's a bit of an institution in Britain and it seems generations of people have grown up listening to his crazy banter. I don't think I was the only one that found myself with a tear in my eye when he finished. Eee by gum he'll be missed.

Day out.

I had a day trip to the bonny city of Edinburgh yesterday. Much fun was had, many sights were seen and much Christmas shopping wasn't done. One hell of a hot chocolate was enjoyed though!

It's a fairly small city by city standards, there's lots of galleries and museums to see including the Royal Museum where the Gifted exhibition is on at the moment which I have some pictures of but can't just lay my finger on at the moment.

Surely not?

I re-heard this this morning and it does make me laugh, hope it does you too.

Crispy days are wonderful

Cold and crisp, now that's how winter is supposed to be.

Another dragon type creature, this one doesn't look at all scary, thinking about it, none of my dragons look scary.

I was running a kids class at the CatStrand arts centre at the weekend. I hate that air drying clay you can get, I mean it's fine but it's such a shame because it just crumbles so easily and I don't think the kids get a fair feel of what clay can be. It's not on really is it to let them spend ages working these mini masterpieces only to let them take them home and turn into a pile of dust. So instead I took in some white earthenware - white! I know but I was very aware of the lovely clean white spaces that they have there and the vision of forty tiny hands leaving prints all over the place and all over the doors to the toilets and the state the sinks would be in . . .

So now I have a workshop full of tiny very fragile creatures, candle holders, tree decorations, reindeer, boxes with tiny little lids, and santa clauses on sleighs! Oh the responsibility!

A cross dressing chicken?

Hmm, well, er, to be honest I can't explain, it just is.

I don't really do people, well not on my pots a least and not generally in large doses in the real world either. I suppose these are sort of people, I think something is in my head from the Netherlands trip last year but I may be wrong. I'm being infiltrated by more weirdness than usual at the moment.

This isn't a statement, it's part of an order for a customer.

New Zealand times.

Tane Mahuta

Three years ago now almost to the day Paul and me took a wee trip across many oceans to the most beautiful and fabulous country of New Zealand. About as far as you can get from here without coming back on yourself. Neither of us had been before but had both wanted to go for a long time, myself pretty much as long as I can remember. I have some distant relatives out there who I had last met when I think I was about 8. However we met up with them and it was like we'd known each other always. Edith Diggle met us at Auckland airport and took us home and looked after us while recovered from the jet lag. Edith's husband, Lynton and I are related in that Lynton's grandad and my great grandad were brothers, I think, so what relation to each other that makes us I can't quite manage to get my head round.

Coromandel Penninsula

Anyway we spent time with them and also with their son Devon and his lovely little girl Freya who just recently has a new baby sister. We had some fantastic times with them all, especially walking in the Whirinaki forest. Oh honestly for a one who loves trees already New Zealand made me just walk around with my jaw on the ground, some of the most fantastic huge trees just all begging to be hugged.

While we were there Edith and Lynton were re-writing a book on New Zealand shipwrecks. Lynton just recently published this new book too as a companion to the main book. These two never seem to stop, they are always busy with what seemed to us like a myriad of projects and always seemed to have a house full of visitors, it was a fantastic time. Lynton used to be a film maker for the National Film Unit. He made a film back in the seventies I think it was about a potter called Barry Brickell who lives on the Coromandel Penninsula in New Zealand. He seems to be a proper excentric potter, built himself a narrow gauge railway to get his clay from the other side of his land. It's another great pottery film, I don't have a copy but you can see some of it here but if anyone knows of one out there...

Myself and Devon at his place in Wellington. This is almost a reproduction of a picture I have somewhere of the two of us about 20 years previously. I was looking for a cracker of a photo of a tiny Hannah on Bolton town hall square with a group of visiting Maori and me in a t-shirt my grandma and grandad had brought back from New Zealand and a New Zealand lamb in my arms (not a real one I hasten to add).

More Kauri trees.

Whiranaki.

Edith is also a painter, here are a couple of her recent pictures that she emailed to me recently. The sky really is that clear amazing blue there. We had two months out there and I narrowly missed meeting Blogger Peter while we were there, next time Peter!

I have hundreds of other pictures from our trip which I could bore you senseless with. Some others might come out from time to time as they fit in with other stories.

Hmmm, very pleasant memories, a proper trip of a lifetime.