How To Frame A Set of Tiles

This is the frieze of tiles I made last summer for the Jose Show. They were bought by someone who wanted to have them framed rather than set onto a wall. Framing several tiles is harder than just the one tile like this one. In this case the set of 15 tiles have to be fixed with epoxy resin to a back board, without grout. The surrounding frame is used in the correct way (not back to front, as in framing a single tile). The frame rebate is just under the edge tiles; the center tiles are resting on a smaller piece of hardboard to which they have all been glued. A second hard board is fixed to the back of the frame.

The Metacarpal Abacus

Just a quick post here to say I have been in Plymouth, being nurse to my daughter and her poor finger. Finger sounds so innocuous, but this particular finger has been anything but that. What followed a simple slamming door incident has ended up in the Plastics department of a very big hospital. The damage was so extreme that she has had to have the bones threaded onto a wire (think abacus); the wire is still poking out the end of the finger now. First we had the metal cage; yesterday she was in again for a plastic version. (I have to Google this amazing stuff they used for the moulding; it could be very useful in the pottery). Today she has better pain killers but they still are not great. The conclusion is three months away they say, but that there will be two years of intolerance to hot and cold and that will be painful every time she changes ambient temperatures.

Do you want to know about the nail? Look away if you don’t. It was removed and the nail bed, then it was reattached. She said the surgeon had crazy magnifying glasses on like something out of a Tim Burton movie. I hear you asking…how the hell she knew. Well this is the worst part; there were not enough staff for a general aesthetic so she had it done under local! The Tim Burton guy asked her what she wanted to listen to while he drilled and sewed. Like she cared, but she did care enough to say, not anything I like please. Tim Burton said is Wet Wet Wet ok, (she is not keen on them)? So album was put in (this is sounding like a medical drama here) glasses on, local aesthetic working….opening bars….”I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes” Was the love all around her at this point? Yes it was, but this is VERY DARK.

Picture;Tim Burton

Image Moulding

I am still without my workshop so I have resorted to sorting my self out visually! The problem with working in Spain is that I just work and work and then I pitch up here in England looking like I really have "gone native". I usually have to get to a hairdresser as soon as I arrive but what with the snow I have had to wait until now. So major cut going on here, it was really long.
I am working on the next collection of work. I am bidding on old television sets on E Bay at the moment and working out how I am going to make my TV portals!

The Survivors

Avro Vulcan B2 Bomber

I was sent this story this morning by a friend because he knows I love these aeroplanes, the Avro Vulcan B2. The photo above was taken by John Kelly a tree surgeon who happened to be at the North East Aircraft Museum, with a camera. Click here to see more of the plane which looks like it has taken on a life of it's own. It is the weight of snow on a museum's prized Cold War bomber that has left it seemingly frozen at take-off. There is just one Vulcan bomber left flying in the world today, and that single plane has only recently returned to the sky. I saw the last Valcan fly at the Farnborough Air Show in very early 90's (check out their, link if only for the Bahrain advert and the sound effects). Photo below is by Paul Thornley taken at Goodwood Revival 2009, another great link and a VERY British pursuit.

Can we not talk about the snow here today, as you see the Vulcan has the last word on the extra 6 inches we had last night. However if you are stuck for something to do have a look at Jessie's word today here, it is hilarious.

Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery

There is a nice mention on the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery web site about the Domestic Bliss pot. See full post here.
The snow is melting here and normal service has been resumed I am glad to say.

Day 6 - I Found the Wardrobe and it's Full of Shops

I have had a complete overload in Petworth town shops and due to the panic buying (not mine I was totally rational and in control) have come back with interesting ingredient options. I am quite pleased with myself on the quiet.

Snowed In Day 5 Narnia

The "Gator" and on foot are the only ways to the end of the lane. Once you get there though it is just as bad as the lane, except with tarmac underneath the ice. We simply have got to make a break for it soon. No snow today and the ice bars have started to melt from the windows so maybe we will get out tomorrow. My road to Narnia below.

Snowed In Day 4 New Socks

The champagne truffles have been located, they were not in the car but were whipped out from nowhere with an enthusiastic flourish by my dear husband after I had cooked an impressive meal last night with only a drop of oil (we are very low on olive oil too). I was beginning to think they had been stolen by a silent maniac with no footprints. Now I am caught in the act of photographing the truffles, I said I am keeping a record of them, so of course we had to have another one while we wait for the next dump of snow.

I am alarmed by the snow and the scant food supplies, I really thought we would get out today and now Andrew has broken out his new socks. Should I take this as a sign that we are doomed? He can hold onto a pair of new socks for up to a year savouring them in his top draw! Will he meet his maker in new socks? Come to think of it, should I put on my new vest?

The four of us have spent the morning digging out the cars. Andrew and I thought we might get to break-out once we got the car on the drive, it was a complete failure, the car is just too low for the height of the snow. We managed about twenty meters with a lot of sliding and then had to get the car back again. A lot of effort in new socks for nothing. I'll let you know if I get my vest out!

Snowed In Day 3

We are still snowed in. Rations were getting low but look here, the 4 wheel drive cavalry arrived with a bag of food, such handsome cavalry I hear you say! Oh I know, so gorgeous.

So here I have, a very large fresh chicken, six large eggs, a bottle of milk, a box of muesli, a bottle of wine (nice wine), apple juice, tea, coffee, pasta and two tins of tomatoes. Add to this to the things I purloined from Josie’s pantry; bacon, cheese, stock and a cup of flour. And then what was left my pantry; potatoes (4lbs), onions (2), carrots (2), turnips (3), leeks (2), and a bottle of champagne. Andrew has a box of Fortnum’s chocolate truffles hidden somewhere which he says he is saving until his cold goes away completely…well quite – WHY!

See how snug we are in here. More snow is forecast for Sunday and Granada had snow last night too. Recipe suggestions please and could they involve the elusive truffles.

Snowed In Day 1

Slight Problem Here

Lots of snow in mid Sussex this morning and we are probably snowed in. Josie spotted the snow on the corrugated roof above as we set off for a walk (not many animal tracks today just fox and one very leggy deer with a terrifyingly long gait). Alan does have the "Gator" and he and Josie have made it to the end of the drive and back, see below, so maybe we are not marooned.

The Drive Back to the Future

I always view this epic drive from Southern Spain to England as back to the future because it is so like time travelling. I leave behind the village and the simple life and head north towards a scary future world of overpopulation and consumerism, hundreds of cars and bright lights that make the nights disappear.
Here are a few photographs of the first leg of the journey through Spain just as far as Madrid. These huge terracotta jars are for olive oil.

And of course the wonderful metal Osborne Veterano bull and the confident blue infill between his tail! You see a lot of these on the way, there are now only 97 in the whole of Spain where before there were 500 all erected in 1957.

From hoof to horn, the bull measures 12.5 metres (38ft), its one- dimensional steel body weighs four tons, but the whole contraption, including scaffolding and foundations, totals 50 tons. They are terrific landmarks - 'take the second exit after the bull'. Even pilots using the airport at Jerez will tell you they have been known to use the local Veterano bull to line up the runway!

The Commission

Can it really be over! The pair of commissioned jars is here, in their place, on the Messel tables. The process has been a dream, a drama and a battle and now I stop and look at them for the first time with detachment I see them really with new eyes and they are right.


The gold luster is difficult to photograph, I have applied gold to the shells over a, oxidized copper oxide slip that went on at the leather hard stage.

The Closing Days of 2009

Wow I haven’t posted for ages; I have been grappling with the elements you see. The closing scenes in the studio were very dramatic, Christmas was incidental compared to the problems I and the population of Southern Spain were experiencing in the dying weeks of 2009.

It all began and ended with the weather; first the freeze; Madrid airport shut shop it was so bad; my Jessie arrived, delayed from London at Malaga and was lucky to get a plane out quite frankly. But then no sooner did the temperatures go up then the rain came down. On a biblical level the floods followed and roads disappeared and bridges threatened to collapse. The Sierra Guards came to our little village with a clipboard to close our bridges, thankfully they didn’t because the only other road out had fallen away and we would have been trapped.

We went to Morag’s for Christmas day. The track up to her house is brutal at the best of times but in this weather it was akin to the sort of roads I saw whilst watching The Long Way Round , in particular those of Kurdistan or the Road of Bones in Russia. If I tell you that the reason there are no photographs of this epic ascent and descent to their house it is on the grounds of my being too terrified to think of recording what I felt were sure to be the last moments of my life you may appreciate how dangerous it was. It was terrifying!

All of this adversity brought more problems of course. Our village had no clear water in the taps, just a thin gravy like mud gush, but worst of all there was no electricity supply to fire the kiln and finish the commission. I still needed to do 1 biscuit firing, 1 glaze firing and two luster firings and all before the 28th of December when I was due to set off with finished said commission in the back of the car! I did it (just) and made it back to England. The jars are done and in position, photographs tomorrow.

Happy New year everyone........photographs of the village clean up in Fornes, Spain.