By popular request

I don't normally do by popular request.  There are all sorts of things I could make that people would buy but generally I try to stick to making what I want to make.  Here's an example of how you can do both!

Some people had commented that my earrings were too long and dangly for them, and didn't I make any smaller ones.  Well, these aren't really what you'd call small, but they are smaller than the others, at just 3cms from the end of the ear wire to the tip of the earring.  Once I had the idea for the shape, I could see that it lent itself to being slightly smaller than some of the others.  All my earlier designs are 4.5, 5 or 5.5cms long, so this does go some way to please those with shorter necks (as I understand that's the reason people want shorter earrings.)

The next idea I had worked out shorter than I expected, too.  These are certainly not as delicate as the kite-shaped earrings, but they're still only 3.5cms long.

Finally, some that are similar to the above (also about 3.5cms), which are really delicate and pretty and then some that are completely different (3.2cms.).

I like all of the new designs but the orange ones here at the bottom are possibly my favourites.  I'd keep them, except I can't wear orange.

What price experience?

On Saturday I put the wrong set of pyrometric cones in the kiln when I packed it.  The ones that went in were for my high-temperature firing.  The kiln was loaded with pots glazed in oatmeal, which is fired to a lower temperature.

I only realised my mistake when I was wondering why the kiln was taking so long to come to temperature and I suddenly remembered what I'd done.  Cones are how I know what heat-work has been done to the pots, so they are of vital importance.  I rely on them.  The pyrometer shows climb and fall and what it shows is roughly related to the temperature inside the chamber but recently the figures had been changing dramatically and after a repair to the pyrometer I didn't know whether it would behave as it had recently or before it started to go wrong.

So I had to make a judgement about when to stop the firing, based entirely on my own experience of the kiln, together with some guesswork about the pyrometer.  Too hot and the colour would be wrong.  Underfired and the pots would be unusable.  One can refire but that has its own risks.  There are a lot of pots in a kilnful.

Front shelves

This is what greeted me when I opened the kiln this morning.  These pots look exactly as they should.  The kiln has been fired to the optimum temperature.  Right on the button!

I am, of course, mightily relieved.  But I'm also really proud of myself.  This is the best result I could have hoped for and it comes as a result of my own judgement.  I have a lot more useful experience as a potter than I sometimes think I do.  What price experience?  Several hundred pounds worth of pots in this case. 

As self-employed, sole trading artists I think we often forget the value of experience.  "I could do that" is often heard from visitors to craft markets and the like when looking at handmade products and then looking at the price.  And it's possibly quite true.  However, my experience means I can more or less reliably produce the items I'm asked for, time after time.  It also means I work much more quickly than someone who is not working full time at it and what price experience in this case means that I'm able to charge a lower rate than otherwise for my products because I'm reasonably fast at making them.  And it means that if things go wrong I stand a good chance of being able to fix them!

I run occasional workshops in silk-painting, free machine embroidery and other textiles skills and recently have been doing some tuition sessions on a one-to-one basis and as it happens, I've been thinking about place of experience in this work too.  The fact that even people who have a flair for the work (which my students do) sometimes need tuition is not because I'm better at it (I'm not sure I am) but because of what I have learned in my many years of experience, both of the materials and skills themselves and about how people learn to use them. Experience is what I am being paid for as a teacher.

What price experience?  Possibly more than I'm asking!

Back shelves

J is for Juggler

Look carefully and you'll see a letter J bottom left of the mug, blue on green.  Then even more carefully and you'll see a silhouette of a juggling figure and three juggling clubs.

Well, I did say you had to look carefully.  I made this mug many, many years ago, at a guess probably about thirty years ago.  At the time I was attending pottery summer schools each year at Ridge Pottery.  I spent my weeks there each summer trying out different decorating styles as my skills increased.  This one uses slip.  The juggler and clubs are made by wetting newspaper cutouts of the shapes, attaching them to the pot before dipping in blue slip  The newspaper peels off when the slip dries out.  The letter is painted on through a newspaper stencil.

I might have got into more slip decoration eventually but the particular clay, glazes and firing method I use don't respond well to dipping in slip, so this was one idea which fell by the wayside.  I have a feeling that that particular year I made three or four others of these for friends as presents.  But it's a long, long time ago. 

In the mean time, though, J is for juggler in the sort of working life I've built up.  I like all the different components and mostly do manage the juggling well.  Today, though, is one of those rare days when the clubs all fall to the ground.

What with making the Hen Portraits, putting on Another Beastly Art Exhibition and a week of tidying loose ended jobs along with fitting in a number of teaching sessions, I haven't been in the pottery for several weeks.  The situation is becoming more pressing as pots are needed that will take a few weeks to produce.  So the week ahead was well planned.  Two teaching slots on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the pottery all day, Thursday cooking and arranging the house for a bring and share, Friday teaching first thing and handles on mugs made on Tuesday and on Saturday I'm going to be attending my first ever school reunion.

The clubs all fell to the ground when I found that the clay I thought was kept just right in an old fridge had gone hard.  New clay much too soft and will take a day sat out in a heated pottery. 

Not enough raw materials for a spontaneous glaze mixing sessions.

Sewing machine booked in for servicing today so couldn't finish a couple of projects which would have been usefully tidied out of the way.

So, failed juggling.  I'm finding useful things to do, of course.  Putting together an order of glaze materials, for one!  Another couple of orders for silk-painting supplies.  Packaging up an order to go in the post.  It's not the same, though.  I really, really wanted to be making mugs today.

Hen Portraits

Well, ok, just one Hen Portrait.  There are seven of them, though, and you'll have to come to Another Beastly Art Exhibition to see the rest.  I'm rather pleased with them.  They were somewhat fiddly - the white section in the middle is 6cms square - and done by silk painting and free machine embroidery.  But they're rather fun, I think.

It's a funny time of year ...

... to be preparing for a big exhibition, but I am.  Followers will be familiar with Another Beastly Art Exhibition but I should probably explain briefly to new readers (hoping there are some!) that Another Beastly Art Exhibition has been a group event running first annually and now occasionally since 1999 involving me, jeweller Hazel Morris (Arkane Jewellery) and painter and printmaker Nat Morley.  We used to exhibit in Painswick but for various reasons (including the obvious one of venues becoming unavailable) we won't be there again. 

This year we're really excited to be exhibiting at Nature In Art, a fabulous museum and art gallery dedicated entirely to ... well, work it out.  They have permanent exhibits, big touring exhibitions and other events, of which Another Beastly Art Exhibition  is one, setting up on Monday, open from Tuesday.  Since we will be taking it in turns to be sitting in the exhibition we're also billed as being artists in residence.  (Follow the link to see full details of our exhibition, including which days each of us will be there.) I've been artist in residence at Nature In Art a few times and people do like to come and chat to find out about the person behind the artwork.  We're hoping there will be lots of visitors because the touring exhibition which will be there at the same time is the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. 

So, as I say, it's a funny time of year.  Generally at this point I'm recovering from autumn markets, collecting what I laughingly call my wits and pondering on new ideas.  This year, though, I was straight back into the pottery making beastly dishes and firing them and the vases that I've been making on and off for a year or more.  My showroom is now full to bursting with fish and lizards.  You can have a sneak preview of one of the vases now, but you'll have to wait for the exhibition to see the rest:

Back and front views, obviously.

Then, as heralded by my last blog post, I had planned to work on new canvasses.  Unfortunately, the ideas I'd had last summer were just too far away and I couldn't get back to them in a hurry.  I thought if I spent an afternoon tidying my studio it might help.  This turned into an entire week of tidying, cleaning, throwing out masses of rubbish and freecycling a lot of other things and moving things round a bit.   This was much more the sort of thing I would expect to be doing at this time of year and in fact it really did free me up so that this week I have been working on a group of new, tiny canvasses.  I've finished the creative part.  Now I just need to attach them to their stretchers, saw up backing board, attach it and hanging hooks.  That shouldn't take too long.  However, I also need to finish re-painting my display kit (shelves, boards, blocks, etc), make a few greetings cards to top up the most popular ones, make sure I've got all my publicity literature printed out, make labels for all the textiles pieces and pack everything up.  I've got three days, including today.  I think it should be possible so long as I stop writing this and go and get on with it ......

Blank canvasses

In a way I see every new year as a blank canvas.  I've written before about how I love the structure of times and seasons and a new year always looks like an opportunity to me.  Of late new years have been opportunities to catch up with work which then haven't turned out as I'd hoped.  In 2012, though, I got my general health back.  I hadn't really realised how much of it I'd lost until it returned!  Almost immediately after I was recovered from surgery I fell over hard on the pavement, sustaining an injured tendon in one place, cartilege in another and ligament in a third.  These injuries haven't really healed much, to be honest,  but I'm still well.  Well, but injured.  There's a huge difference.

During the autumn we worked really hard at doing lots more markets, since the permanent outlets I'd been selling in started closing.  I say we because I'd find it really hard going without the work done by M as roadie and pot shifter.  My showroom is upstairs so for any event the work has to be packed up, boxes brought downstairs and into the car and then afterwards carried upstairs again.  It's heavy work and I'm so grateful that I don't have to do it all myself.  Anyway, amongst the markets I also just ploughed on making pots and although I haven't caught up, I have done reasonably well and for the first time in ages I don't need to concentrate on catching up.

So - a blank canvas.  And the photo shows eight new pieces of dupion silk which arrived this morning, ready for some new embroidered canvasses.  Another Beastly Art Exhibition opens at Nature in Art on 5th February and there is new work to make for it.  More about the exhibition, and the new work, anon.

Happy New Year.

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

These are, of course, a few of my favourite things. 

I've written about my firing cycle before.  Well, I'm just at the end of a making/firing cycle and had a lustre firing on Wednesday.  Yesterday was unpacking, photographing and then making up some deliveries and today I'm just going to share a few of the things that came out that I particularly like.

So here are some more lizard cereal bowls.  All of these pots are unique but I have returned to certain colourways which have been particularly successful.  On the left is a blue lizard and leaves with red spots, which does look like the first colourway but isn't.  That had silver lustre and this has gold and that one had red spots made with carmine lustre, whereas this has red spots made with red lustre.  The carmine spots had been so successful that I ordered (at some expense) 25g of it to replace the first 5g I'd bought when it ran out.  But then ....  it came out a completely different colour.  Some research suggestst that my first bottle was the weird one and should never have come out as red as it did.  Further research identified another supplier with a different selection of lustres.  Talking it all through with them confirmed that of all the materials potters need to buy, lustres change most often, possibly even every batch is different in some colours.  Ah well.  Something you just have to go with.  So I ordered 5g of red and applied it merrily to pots.  I also accepted samples of tangerine, purple and emerald.

The red, as you see, is lovely and red.  Success.  The purple is ok too, though as I've mentioned before, I already have a dark and light purple which arrive under the pseudonyms of dark and light green.  I had hopes for emerald, but alas, it is only a duller sort of mauve.  The centre bowl above has emerald veins on the leaves.  I think you can just catch the mauve.  There's some on the lizard too, but it works fine.  The one on the right was just another colourway, going for something a bit darker for those who prefer that, and all in all I think it works.

The tangerine is delicious.

Here it is the darker of the leaves, the lighter ones using "real orange" underglaze colour (this time actually used under the glaze) and gold lustre spots.  I love this mug and these colours.  I expect to be using more tangerine.  I also expect to be asking for some more samples of the large number of colours this new supplier has in case some of the others turn out as zingy as the red and tangerine. 

I'm slightly worried about my favourite things, though.  They seem to be lizards, closely followed by ivy, with or without the lizards.  All of which is fine, but does it matter that most of my new work is still dominated by them?  They may be my favourite things but are they everyone else's?  And again, the colours.  If I think back to the wallhangings I've made over the years, my favourites have often been in the red/rust/orange/cream range.  They've sold - eventually -  but I sense that the majority of people like the blue range better.  So should I be planning to go further with the red/tangerine/gold/yellow idea or will I end up with shelves full of pots nobody wants?  My policy has always been to make the work I'm most passionate about, though.  I always said that although I could make patchwork cushions for sale, I never would because I would be bored.  This is the work I do and if you don't like it you don't have to buy it, kind of thing.  On the other hand, of course, if you don't buy anything, I won't make a living, so I do make more commercial decisions.  I work hard at maintaining my stocks of "everyday" designs. I think this means I'll continue to follow my heart so lizards and leaves will be it for a while longer.

And finally, talking of hearts, I wish I'd made more of these:

I've made one with the silver hearts before but really like the gold hearts.  I think they'll go soon, but I'll definitely do some more next year.