Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard work

Blimey life's hard at the moment. All that running around last weekend, then straight in to firing mode on return. There are quite a few pictures of the weekend's activities, including a video stream of some dodgy geezer with a bad moustache, decorating on Hannah's blog.



So a lot to do before Sunday's firing. I've glazed most stuff on the inside now, all the outside glaze to do tomorrow. Then I'll start to pack into a lovely dry kiln, dried out by merit of the new drainage and the fire I lit in it last night. I think the floor of the kiln has been very wet, for a very long time, but now the brick footings feel dry as a bone - hurrah!



The last couple of days and nights I've been scratching away at dry slip, applying sgrafitto decoration to a number of pots, including this little jug, depicting a pigeon-pair, perching in a tree. The sgrafitto style of decoration was typically employed in the traditional country potteries of Devon between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

These pots are going to be included in the Derby Boys show that opens at the Long Room Gallery in Winchcombe, a week on Saturday. If you'd like to come along, drop me an email and I'll make sure you're sent an invitation, or just turn up if you fancy.



This puzzle jug has taken me hours - I just finished it a few moments ago.



Usually I would decorate spontaneously and quickly into wet slip - sgraffito creates much scratchier marks that I was able to plot out first with a soft pencil. It's very labour intensive.



I've had to remember my old handwriting 'skills' from schooldays. The more naive the application, the more effective the outcome - thank goodness!