The Shop Window (again)

Fiesta time in the our nearest big town and once again the window dresser outdoes herself with this stunning collection of laundry and household cleaning products that quite frankly just draw you in off the street. It makes you want to throw all caution to the wind and blow your entire housekeeping budget on such well known products as LUZIL soap powder and bleach that comes in snot green gallon plastic bottles. It is also a comfort to know that Cillit Bang translates across the language barrier, maybe this is the very country it was designed for because for me its brand name does not really inspire thoughts of a powerful cleaning product.

The haberdashery window is also a delight to behold. Colour coordinated thread and buttons, rickrack edgings and embroidery skeins randomly strewn. And is that a forgotten hoopla I see on the left, a sly reference to the hoopla style of window dressing so religiously observed by this shop? The galleon ships are obviously some abstract reference to rigging and thread, either that or they are just completely random!

The Pit Firing

As promised some photographs of the pit firing with Morag MacIness and Joanna Still in the olive groves of Malaga province. The two gals worked for four days together, Joanna working alongside Morag on her crazy dogs in extremely high temperatures. The pit was dug some months earlier and permissions had to be sought from the mayor to do the actual firing. I pitched up once all the hard work had been done! They packed the kiln with sawdust, dung and firewood, burying the treasured dogs as they went. On the dot of 9.00am on Wednesday they were allowed to begin the process, a dab of lighter fluid and away it went with a fairly strong wind to fan it.


My job was hose pipe standby fireman, not needed. Once the flare had subsided I thought it was all rather slow. The wooden pallet that dropped the depth of one side of the pit seemed to take the fire down to the sawdust and dung quite nicely. After a few hours it was covered with corrugated iron and left to smoke.

The following day, hours ahead of schedule it was time to unpack. The high wind had accelerated the process.

Vessel by Joanna Still, smoke fired terra sigillata, very beautifully worked.

Morag MacInnes in her Spanish studio.

“A Grand Day Out” the dogs come out to play. See more photographs of Morag’s exhibition last year here and on her website.

Just out of the Kiln

From the Nest

There are five now and they are getting pretty big and they can all twitter .

Floribunda Exotica

This is quite a small jar and stands with it’s lid at 25 cm in the raw, so it is going to be even smaller when finished. Cream slip over the dark red clay for the background and coloured decorating slips with all the plants cut in to reveal the dark clay body. This is so far from lump of clay beginning just 23 hours, I guess another 5 hours to finish the decoration and glaze. I have used a lot of colours, everything from yellow to green and gray, but no blue at all. It is drying out far too much so I have to finish tomorrow but here it is at this stage.

Sting Ray Day

The Swallows are fine and Stan is the biggest, none have fallen out of the nest yet and feeding is constant.
In the pottery today I have worked on this ray dish scratching away at the blue grey slip, I started it yesterday so it has in fact taken me, with the build, three days to get to this stage, but I have been doing other things too. Tomorrow I will put on some copper and then it is off to the kiln with it. Working out my return on these dishes I am not making very much money. Should I give up (?) no, not yet I might get faster at making them. If I really crunch this down into man hours I suppose it is 20 hours to end product, this one is going to sell for £300, after gallery split, well best not to think about it really because of course all the clay, glaze and electricity is absolutely free! I HAVE to speed up the processing, the question is HOW?

Latest from the Nest

Just have a look at these pictures, I think we might have more than we initially thought. First Stan and Steve resting their beaks.

Later, it's lunch time, is that another beak?

Look again very carefully.

We have quite a family going on here. I am making pots I promise I am, in between watchng the nest.

Mr. and Mrs. Swallow and the Twins Steve and Stan

At last I can see the little baby swallows, they hatched over the weekend and this is the first time they have put their heads above the edge. They are so high up on the wall that I can’t get to see inside the nest but I think there are only two chicks in there and I have only found a couple of egg shells.

The new camera is really doing its stuff here as this was very low light photography.

The nest is sited high up on the right of this picture under the ledge.

The Phoenix and her Mate Revive

“The Phoenix hope, can wing through the desert skies, and still defying fortune’s spite; revive from the ashes and rise” Cervantes.
For my cousin; with her lovely house almost completely destroyed by fire last Thursday.

Easy Riders

The temperature in Granada hit 40 degrees over the weekend and I am about to reveal another side of me, I don’t just make pots, I can grease a bearing and cut a gasket out of pink sugar paper too!

When it gets this hot there is only one course of action, get out on the bikes and be bikers. A new bikers club opened in the city on the industrial estate Pulianas by the chicken factory (nice). All the dudes were there and lots of bikes too. I took my less nice camera and I am afraid it shows in the pictures but it gives the idea of how it was above.

Picture below of my husband, he gets all the nice shots of him because I am always the one taking them.

Absolute essential maintenence of course.

Of course everything begins so late in Spain and after we spent some time at the new club we went on to a favourate bar El Boliche. This is a great place and full of the most amazing bikes and memorabilia, to find it head up towards the Alhambra and turn off to the right north of the river towards the Sierra Nevada.

I love this little tableau to communication below, not intentionally set up, these little phones rang all night. El Boliche has a lovely atmosphere and a great menu and the most perfect little garden to sit in.

Now if all this is just too heavy metal for you I promise I will get back to the pots postings tomorrow. I have practically finished the phoenix tiles and begin another pot today. In the meantime for something very pretty have a look at Poppys Pretty Place and hello to Poppy. And the eggs have hatched!

Mother and Father are Doing Well

Can I move on to my birds now and forget the test card for a bit. Mr. and Mrs. Swallow (not Swift) are getting very excited, I think we have moved into the maternity unit stage, the eggs are surely going to hatch soon because Mrs. S is on that nest all day long and Mr. S is flouting visiting hours and popping in on a half hourly basis. The problem is I am working right by the nest and have to walk through the light well every time I have to get to the house or the workshop and they get a bit startled by me. Does anyone know the gestation period of the swift; it’s got to be soon now?

Meanwhile in the workshop I am working of the queen of all imaginary birds.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

"Out of order" transmission test card plate. First attempt but you can see what I mean about the shiny glaze, it’s all wrong on this piece. Back to the drawing board and the mixing table to find a solution.

The Tiles I Love

The tiles I love! Shown here with paper grout about the same thickness as the fags I used to roll when I smoked.
Test card….not good so no photograph even, but that was the testing one so I have higher hopes for the next. I really need a matt or satin glaze, but I have this idea that matt must mean not see through, like opaque glass, you can’t see through it. Someone correct me if I am wrong. Going to get my big girls book of glazes out now and look it up.

The Impossible Commission

This is in response to an item at Linda Starr’s. She has just fired her new kiln for the first time successfully. This is a salutary story of how not to do it.

I have been known to make fire and glaze a pot in 3 days. Over 9 years ago I had an order that was so great I couldn’t turn it down; the problem was I had to deliver it within 72 hours. It was for 50 personalised mugs. The brief was fairly free, the design was completely up to me the only condition was they all had to have “The Graduate” written on them and be individually boxed and gift wrapped and delivered to the stage door of the Gielgud Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue by 5.00pm in 3 days time. I worked all morning of day 1 making 80 mugs on a jigger jolly machine, put on handles 4 hours later, in the afternoon I dipped them all into slip and lost about 15 to handles dropping off. Then I force dried them through the night. Day 2, bisquit fired them still damp in 6 hours, crash cooled (lost none) and in the evening dipped all into majolica glaze while warm to drive off some of the water. Threw every colour of stain I had at them then devised a cradle and sign wrote them all (lost another 10 at least in this bit, 51 survive). Back into the kiln (still damp) for a 7 hour glaze fire (about 1.00 am by now) unpack on day 3 at 400 Celsius in gauntlets (all survived, hairs on arms didn't). They were wrapped and in the boot of the car with a 3 hour dash to London to deliver before the curtain went up.

My client was Jerry Hall; the price I charged was astronomical, the London West End custom is for the leading lady to give a gift to all the cast and crew on opening night or bad luck will prevail for the run of the show.

A picture of the 51st mug above with link back to this Linda. So you see, you can break the rules when they really HAVE to be broken!

Transmission Test Card B

Oh no, another repeat on the box……we interrupt programs and return to the test card for the foreseeable future. I am properly obsessed.
This is the second version, I have loaded the image up at quite a high resolution for the potters among you who might want to look at it closely (click the image). I have applied the slips very carefully this time and have even burnished the circle section. The outer boarder is actually black and dark grey but does not give the same effect as the burnished areas. Each lozenge of slip is cut in to the grid with a blunt tool, I like this effect. However it has taken me 4 hours to do and the plate is only 16 cm square! As before it is the cobalt in the last colour block for the royal blue which develops in the kiln.
The kiln is on now with Test Card A and the set of tiles, amongst other things. It is getting too hot to work in there now and there is not much relief outside either. Glazing tomorrow.