Showtime

Evening all. Thank all very much for your kind comments.

I was so pleased to get a successful firing at last. Hopefully the damp issue is resolved for ever. Planning the pack much better this time would seem to have paid off too.

John Edgeler came on Wednesday and collected a lot of the pots to take to The Long Room Gallery, ready for tomorrow's opening. I'm really looking forward to it. Nic and Simon will be travelling over/up too.



I'm chuffed that twenty odd years after Simon, Nic and I were knocking about together in Derby, we're at last doing a show together.

It was a wonderful course that we had the privilege of studying all those years ago, properly funded and really thoroughly taught by passionate tutors who had great skills and expertise. There were only a few students in each year group, so there was plenty of everything to go around. Golden days.



This is some of the stuff I've been taking inspiration from in recent months. Winter provides bare bones and structure. The countryside's changing rapidly at the moment - we've had some beautiful spring sunshine recently. I'm looking forward to walking the lanes in the next few weeks and seeking inspiration to make some Spring pots.



Here are a couple of jugs from the firing. I couldn't find my camera when John came to take my pots away, so didn't get to photograph them.



These are of some that I still have here. John took some pictures however and is going to give me copies. I'll post some at a later date.



Andy asked how the pressed dishes had come out. Here's a picture that probably explains it as well as words. Some were ok, some were awful. They're something I need to do some work on. Most of my decoration is done through very wet slip on vertical forms and relies upon gravity to help move the slip around in a dribbly fashion. Of course, on flat surfaces this is completely different, so I've yet to find my feet with it. The next kiln is going to contain a lot of flatware, which will force me to sort it out.



Other news.......

Different Dave came over on Thursday and helped me to slam together the front wall of the little lean-to we built a little while ago. The blue sack in the foreground contains the clay that was dug out when sinking in the door post. I have a big old 1950's glazed shop door with brass furniture that will hang from it. It's mahogany and mighty heavy, so we had to dig down deep, into the beautiful clay before we concreted the post in.



The shed's all made from salvage materials as you can doubtless tell. It'll all be given a paint job and have stuff growing up it eventually so it should look quite sweet in a rustic sort of way.

Until recently I've been storing saggars in there, but it's going to be a place to keep my finished work when it's done. Not really big enough to call a 'showroom', but it'll be a place to display and store my pots, rather than keeping them on the top shelf in the workshop like they are at present, taking up valuable space and often resulting in the pots getting splattered with clay.



This is what the pots will look like through the little windows - how quaint.

Next I'll be building a new woodshed. One day I'll be organised - well maybe.

We're off to Winchcombe in the morning to the opening that starts at noon, then we'll stay overnight at Blogger Matt's, before heading off to Manchester to visit Hil's folks. A brief stop off at my parents' place on the way back, then back to work on Thursday. Busy busy.

Happy weekend all.