St Ives Ceramics

The highlight of the galleries was this one, St Ives Ceramics, which we found on Fish Street. It was just an Aladdin’s cave of brilliant pots. The top blue one is of course a Colin Pearson, such a beauty and he was such a nice man too, I met him in 2000 and fell in love instantly. I loved him and will always love his work.Below are some pots of Nic Collins, also breathtaking and I think in the bottom picture there are some of John Jelfs. I can't tell you how good this gallery was I recommend it heartily to the collector and the potter to visit if you can.

St Ives Beach

St Ives

As I was going to St Ives

I met a man with seven wives

Said he, "I think it's much more fun

Than getting stuck with only one"

By Roald Dahl

The original riddles earliest traceable publication date is 1730 and it was this:

As I was going to St. Ives

I met a man with seven wives,

Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits: kits, cats, sacks and wives,

How many were going to St. Ives?

Plymouth City Art Museum and Art Gallery

Photograph strictly copyright of Plymouth City Museum and Art gallery

Photograph strictly copyright of Plymouth City Museum and Art gallery

Photograph strictly copyright of Plymouth City Museum and Art gallery

These images were taken in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery This is where my daughter works so I was allowed down into the stores to see all the ceramics. It was fabulous and there was so much to see I just couldn’t photograph it all. Shown here is an exquisite 6 inch porcelain pot by Mary Rogers, I have always loved her work. Born in 1929 she made this piece in 1984, her studio is near Falmouth in Cornwall.
The large stone ware bottle I think was made by an unknown artist I need to check on this one, I liked it very much.
I found the woman potter image interesting, it is German and part of one of the museum display boards, it is the first time I have seem a woman as potter from this era.
More pictures tomorrow of a St Ives ceramic gallery that was wonderful.

Photograph and image strictly copyright Plymouth City Museum and Art gallery

St Ives and the Tate

I am off to St Ives in Cornwall tomorrow for the weekend with my daughter. We are staying in a lovely hotel on the beach and intend to see some art. At the Tate there is the Lucie Rie room picture from the Tate web site above.
Also at the Tate is the Alfred Wallis (below) exhibition which I want to see, picture taken from Tate web site. Click here to see more.

Stephen Kettle

At last I am back to the computer and a posting. Arriving in Sussex was dramatic; we had a very good drive (1200 miles) to the French northern coast with great weather. As soon as we sailed into English waters it started to rain and then thunder and then fork lightening.

Look what has arrived at the Joze Show over the weekend, a few works are arriving and it is very exciting to see the beginnings of this exhibition on September 6th. This is the work of Stephen Kettle and it sits very well in this landscape; he is entirely self taught and works with slate. He stacks piece by tiny piece to create this amazing work. He believes that stacked slate is a work of art in the truest sense, creation of order out of chaos. The sphere of slate is called The Beginning.

Sianna, sits serenely by the lake, a few yards away a small oval of grey shale reveals a parallel corporeal shape also meticulously fashioned in slate. I can not do any of this justice with the camera; she is quite small and viewed from a distance one is not quite sure if what you are seeing can be true. She is perfectly formed and gives every impression of being alive.

The Eyes have It

I decided to go for a gold luster firing at the last minute and picked out some of the eyes in some of the fish platters. The gallery of eyes is above, second and the last have gold eyes.
I find it bewildering driving through weather systems, I leave 38 degrees; it won’t be that hot in England. But I prefer doing this journey by car than flying; logically I understand the distance more. So I will be out of the loop for a few days now, next post from Sussex and the pussy cats.

Final Kiln

These are the last of the pieces for England. The tiles are for my cousin whose house burnt down last month, as you can see I lost one and had to make another. It cracked in the drying probably because I rest a very heavy slap of slate over them to help keep them flat and this one was beginning to curl already.

Also one last fish, quite a big one at 39 cm.

Do not Adjust your Monitor

The old days were the best I think and I always did like a black and white film. This second attempt (they are both the same plate by the way) is a better result but I have got so much work to do here it is going to be a long road, I am ditching the white earthenware as it is this clay that is throwing the colours and making it patchy. After reading Linda Starr’s great post about Stan Bitters work I want to try and construct this image in separate tiles.

Invaders from the deep, mega stingray is now operational and ready for action

From the top:
Mega Stingray
Shallow hump moulded dish standing on three thrown feet. Scrafitto decoration carving away coloured slip to reveal slip under. Infill with copper oxide to obtain green dapple.

Raymond
Shallow hump moulded dish standing on three thrown feet. Scrafitto decoration carving away coloured slip to reveal slip under. Eyes in copper oxide
Both Mega and Raymond available at The Joze Show 6th September

Copper Ray with pink underside
Shallow hump moulded dish standing on four feet. Painted with coloured slips with scrafitto decoration.

Jazz Ray
Shallow hump moulded dish standing on three thrown feet. Painted with coloured slips with scrafitto decoration.
Available Zimmer Stewart Gallery 20th July

Lily Ponds and Fish Nets

Top shot is a big lily pond leaf, very tricky to get through the kiln with out a crack; two others were too badly damaged to do anything with. I like them very much and with the smaller green one it looks very bright and colourful. There will be more work on leaves, next up is the Ginkgo, I have been practicing already on this shape and it is less lightly to crack.

The square plate is on white earthenware, stamped RECESSION PROOF on the back and the last Ray dish has a pattern based on fishnet stockings; you need to click her bigger to see this I think. It took ages to do so I should try Sofia’s Dad method see here, it might speed things up a bit. (You should note here that it is a complete coincidence that my name is in this link and that I pass an uncomfortably accurate resemblance to that smug ginger cat.) But still I love the fishnet stocking look here and would like to incorporate it into another dish soon but transposing the black for white and the white for black.

Obviously I was wearing my FN stockings while I did this fish detail because they are just so right for the workshop environment, I should really have got a photo of that, oh well you will just have to take my word for it.

The Midnight Garden Jar is Fired

Well, here it is, still hot. The kiln looks good but this is the one I was really anxious about. The cobalt has done just what I planned and has produced a bloom on the shoulders of the jar similar to that on a black grape. I would have liked that look to have carried that through to the lid as well which has come out glossier. But I don’t think it detracts. The bloom occurs when the cobalt is applied very thickly.

27 cm high.
More pictures soon.

The Midnight Garden Jar is Finished

At last it is finished, I think the background infill has added a couple of hours to this little pot, I just hope it works when fired. Picture above of my paint table for this one, you can see how thick I use the slips. I use a different sable brush for each colour and two dry brushes for sweeping away the cutting. I am not sure about the moon it may disappear by the end of the day; I need to live with it for a while.
On the next pot now, but I need marmalade sandwich first.

The Midnight Garden Jar

Do you see the imprint of William Morris here? Well it is true that Morris amongst many others is a great inspiration for me. But I also see references to the Arab quarter of the city of Granada in this little pot too; maybe it is the domed lid and the little stars and also the plants being captured here in the dark. What I think is so interesting about Morris is that he in turn was inspired by Islamic art, in particular Turkish ceramics and Persian carpets. It was this that helped him to create a new movement in British design. For him, the Muslim world had managed to preserve the art of the craftsman and avoid the ills of industrial production. He espoused the philosophy that art should be affordable and hand made; this was already a reality in the Islamic world. Not stopping at arts and crafts, he was a passionate advocate of social utopianism and believed in the rights of the worker.

Victorian designer, poet, craftsman and socialist radical William Morris photographed here at the Hammersmith Socialist Society. [possibly 1885], Morris standing in second row photograph from the Mark Samuels Lasner collection source

The Midnight Garden Jar

I am going to try and photograph this jar through all its stages. It is about 11 inches tall, coiled with red earthenware. I have been planning this one for a while in my head, I want to create a garden in the dark and have decided to use a strong cobalt for the sky, this should come out very dark and shows here in these photographs as purple in its raw stage.

The nest is empty tonight so I think that’s it, they have all gone.

First Flight From Nest

So, no sooner do I get my act together and take the in flight photographs, Stan and Steve (the big ones) make their maiden flight and leave flowed by a third (unnamed, poor thing I hope she will not suffer from this stigma in the skies). And I have since seen the three of them and their stumpy tails; they fly only over the house air space it seems, practicing their loops and twirls, I wonder where they will sleep tonight?


The two runt chicks are really flapping scared at the thought of leaving. Mrs. S is doing her utmost to coax them both out by flying past with tasty grubs in her beak temptingly but not landing, it is quite a feat I feel and the two chicks are livid with her.

STOP PRESS
Up date – I know where Stan, Steve and she with no name are sleeping tonight; back at the nest, they all just returned! BUNDLE MANIA

From the Nest

It feels like weeks since these eggs hatched, the only time I get to do a beak count in this crowded nest is when they are feeding, and there are still five.
They are all still in the nursery and the parents are ragged with feeding duties. The young birds are at the stage where they are flexing their wings, they take it in turns to hang out on to the edge of the nest, imagine being in the deep end of the swimming pool, your holding on to the edge and kicking your legs like mad? Well this is what they are doing only with their wings. I don’t know what that nest has been stuck up with but next time I’m in a gluing situation I’ll look for a passing swallow to lick and stick. The sky is somewhat Hitchcock like at the moment with Swifts and Swallows and Martins; maybe this is why we don’t have any mosquitoes. It has got to be launch day soon for this brood, they have all their feathers and are just missing the two long tail points, are these the flight rudders, they could be essential? Despite this there are a lot of flight demonstrations (think Cinderella and the ballgown moment) going on from the parents and I have to be careful I don’t walk right into a slow motion fly past on the way to or from the workshop.