Packing up

I shouldn't be doing this but I had to photograph them for the Zimmer Stewart Gallery in Arundel where they are all going. There are more photographs on the gallery site here.

The last Pot "Origin" is finished

My moment in Print

This is a lifelong wish for me; to get into Ceramic Review Magazine. We dreamt of things like this when we were at college and it has taken 20 years + to acheive it. Click to see the whole article as a PDF here.
The kiln is on and ramping up nicely, we have had 2 power cuts already but so far it has managed to carry on regardless.

The Bonus Fish

This is the one that got away, I just found it in the damp cupboard and painted it this morning, he is a bit wet but I am putting him in the kiln and have made a little kiln shelf pyramid for it in case he BLOWS!

The last Pot is finished

Darwin 200 is being force dried on the terrace in the sun. The lid is always the last to dry. I HAVE to fire it today or it will not be ready in time for the show. So it is first firing today, Saturday. Glaze firing tomorrow and unpack on Monday. Well that’s the plan.

The last Pot "Origin"

I am quickly putting this up as I HAVE to get back to work on it. This is the Darwin Pot – well everything ends in Darwin and it ties together all the work for Iceland. My daughter has just told me via e mail from her museum desk in England that Darwin killed a fox with his geology hammer! Interesting, I will let you know if I get anymore on this story, she is a natural history assistant curator so she should know.
Pictured here is the pot at the stage I am at now (above). The vine that I am painting is cut in and thorns are cut with a sharp porcupine quill, it is my perfect tool at the moment.

Above picture was taken after 2 days of painting all the species in their windows, I scrape all the black slip away before applying the vines. I know it looks quite nice with the black but that is just the photgraph. My biggest issue now is keeping the thing damp while I finish it. I think another 2 days should see it done.

The Shop Window

Because I know you love them; another window. The dresser has been busy and changed all the products and created another breathtaking display, please click on the picture to see in all it's glory of full size. I can’t work out the link between, interior masonry crack filler, charcoal insoles, the sulfuric acid, combs, hair rollers and body gel (although the last three items do loosely sit together). Neither can I grasp the relevance of the stiffened fabric flowers which must have taken the dresser days to construct, unlike the window with its liberal use of staples and post-it notes. But you know those rollers are only 60 cents….that’s a major bargain!

Extinct Oceanic Species

An absolute shocker of a fish from the kiln today. This is a very big plate, I was working on the idea of evolution and extincion when I came up with this beast.

The Simple Pleasures of Test Cards

I have just finished watching Life on Mars, a series on DVD from the BBC, it is all about time travel. In a nutshell, all the communication from the future is via the test transmission girl or via a radio. I had always had a womb like relationship with the test card image and so to find it communicating was very scary indeed, and this set me thinking about a new theme of work for after the fish madness.

When I was born (1960) we just had the radio. I must have been about 4 when we got our first TV. I was completely won over by it and spent long hours just watching the daytime test transmission. It was a spectacular piece of Byzantine time-wasting. With the test card music I was in a controlled trance and in charge of the buttons that induced it. I would twiddle my hair and stare transfixed by this drama, although there was supposed to be nothing on the screen to see. Or maybe there was?

Sometimes you could find another test card by turning the knobs, something grainy and almost illegible would pop up. I know this seems ridiculous by today’s standards of TV entertainment but when I was a child television was still a source of wonder and not something to be taken for granted. And still now I do not take it for granted as that early exposure to TV graphics has obviously created something. Test card music is a well-researched genre today: but what about the visual side of the output?

Now here in Spain I don’t have a TV that shows English programs, so maybe all this is about homesickness? I sort of miss the TV, the nostagia of the TV, it’s only now it’s gone that I can remember its compellingly stable importance to me as a child of the 60’s.

This is a link to you tube showing the test card

The Fish Shop Step

Isn’t this wonderful, click on it to see bigger. It is right out side the spiteful fish shop, I promise I am not stalking fish, but a girl has got to eat. I spied it last week just after the fish man had swilled out and the hands were full of water but I didn’t have my camera with me. Maybe it is better like this.

Fish Stack

I know what you’re thinking; you can see kiln shelves in this shot. Actually you can only see the one kiln shelf, and this is the one and only one. The other shelf is a miss matched oblong shelf from some very long forgotten oblong kiln that is in kiln heaven.
Anyway, it is looking pretty exciting from where I am standing and a bit like the deep end at the Sea Life Center. All the colours will change as per usual and it will be at least 3 days before they are transformed back into rock from whence they came. So, if you’re listening DEBSA (the all Spanish electric company for Andalucia) keep your switches on, I am not interested in any of your power cuts this weekend. They are not romantic and they are not amusing. Please note, there is more to go into this kiln but I just couldn’t bear you to see the shelf arrangements after this point, it becomes ludicrous, and would completely undermine my credibility as a potter.
Hello to Cinderelish and welcome, another new watcher from afar.

doe RAY me

This one has just been born, seen here in the raw, so all to play for in the kiln!

CuO Copper Oxide

I am very pleased with this dish. Photographed here I think it really does look like it has come from the sea. The green dapple is caused by copper oxide which is very fickle in the kiln; one is never quite sure how it is going to behave. In my electric kiln it should always go green because of the oxygen in the firing chamber. The fickleness is in how green it will go (it can go black). The colour green varies according to the glaze I use; but the spectrum can be anything from green to bluish to yellowish to soft mottled pinks and even turquoise depending on what it is mixed with.
Copper also jumps from one pot to another in the kiln and worse than that I have known it to appear on a pot where there has been no copper in the kiln whatsoever. For this reason I never used to use copper, but now it is all caution to the wind in this country. The really amazing thing about copper however is that is goes deep red if the kiln is fired in a wood, oil or gas fired kiln and at the top most temperature you stop all the oxygen entering the chamber causing a reduction. A difficult process and last time I did it left me with no eyebrows or eyelashes.
So next time you look at a copper roof or building you will know why it is green, it has oxidized.

Good Friday in Ronda

These two dogs managed to get all their sheep onto the hillock under the olive tree; it was a suitably biblical scene for the day. I wondered what they were waiting for or looking for, there was such purpose in the whole exercise. The grazing was completely pointless under the tree where the earth was bare and dusty but the day was drawing to a close so maybe this is sheep bedtime.
More pots tomorrow I hope. Hello to some new watchers Kate Gabrielle, Linda Starr and the Gaffer Girls all from America!

The Shop Window

Today you have a picture of my local shop window display, although I say display in the loosest sense of the word. This shop in fact sells everything from cheese to hair dye, from shoes to hams, and formaldehyde to rat poison. And their only shop front and window, shown here, is always worth a picture.
Whoever does this display obviously feels they have some authority on window dressing, as illustrated by the shimmering pleated back drop of very theatrical fabric (they don’t sell fabric) and the green crepe paper (available for purchase in cents but also marked in Peseta) is faded on all edges by time.
This is a very full window for what is going to be a busy week on the streets Spain. As you see it is presenting, in the hoopla style, a cross range of cleaning products for home and some for personal hygiene. The usual arrangement is to keep to just the one discipline, household being the favorite and usually themed into laundry or blocked drains, never a confusion like we are seeing here, must be the Easter madness. With all the amazing things this shop has to offer I am at a loss to know why they insist on displaying bleach (note the jaunty angle) and, yes, you spotted it, Tampax!

Ray Dish

This is the Ray Dish that I have been working on all weekend; it is very slow going scratching away the black slip to reveal the white underneath. There are now four fish from the deep residing in the bottom of the kiln.

However it was only a matter of time before the fish morphed into moths again. Currently sitting on the bench in the workshop is a giant version of a moth. It is terrifying. I get so frightened by it I have to cover it up. I am definitely going to have problems firing the thing and it may not survive.

The process for my membership of the Chelsea Arts Club has commenced. I have been entered into the book of Ordinary IV Page No: 174. How thrilling is that! Mind you if they get a look at me in those green overalls it could be all over before it's begun.

When the Boat Comes In

I have had a very warm firing. Now I am too busy to write anything because I have a mission plan. It’s quite a nice fish now isn’t it. Here it is in the making.

And oh yes I have to post this picture I snapped in a very traditional Spanish hotel. This is the card room…just look at those tables, aren't they fabulous. I have got to go back when the room is in full swing.