Wednesday 1 July 2009

Home

Hello again everybody.

Well I'm back in Devon after a wonderful few days in the Nottinghamshire sunshine. I had a thoroughly good time and met up with many of my pottery chums and got to make some lovely new friends too. It's been a hectic month - three shows in four weekends, so we've seen a fair bit of each other lately which has been great. This was an inspiring weekend and a top quality show that still remains my favourite event of the year.

In spite of the long hours and the many miles of travelling, the highs and the lows, successes and failures, the hand-to-mouth existence, I can't imagine ever doing anything other than make pots for a living, even though sometimes I kid myself that I could(I was all for giving it up a couple of weeks ago). I like the people I meet in the world of ceramics, too much to ever leave it.



The sun shone for us this year, the last two years we have endured torrential rain. A lot of pots found themselves new homes, thank you so much to those who bought them and thank you too, to those who didn't but took the time to talk about and understand my work - that's just as important.



My camera batteries went flat pretty much straight away, so I've pinched these pics from a couple of other blogs.

The first two here are from the remarkable wood turner and carver, Robin Wood's blog, check out his beautifully crafted work and interesting commentaries, if you haven't already.


Robin is the motivation behind The Heritage Crafts Association, which sets out 'to support and promote heritage crafts as a fundamental part of our living heritage.'

Please follow the link and take a look at the site and if you will, please sign up to be a supporter of this important cause,(which is free). Thanks to Robin, the plight of our craft heritage is now the subject of debate in Westminster.




My good chum Blogger Andrew took this shot of crazy potters, left to right Blogger Dan Finnegan from the States, Arwyn Jones, Toff Milway and dear ol' Paul Young. A lovely bunch of chaps bless 'em.



In spite of my fears before I left, my demo seemed to go fine. There were quite a few folk there, so I didn't look past the second row, where Andrew and Hannah were sitting. This picture was also lifted from Andrew's blog, you can find more shots from the show there of various potters' work and also brief a video clip from my rambling demo, which I apparently delivered with my flies undone - oops.


It's taken a while to get back to this blog. On Monday I was helping my friend and photographer Johnny Thompson to erect a huge prefabricated studio in the baking sunshine and yesterday I went to Plymouth to deliver some pots to the Artmill Gallery. I'm part of a group exhibition called Draw, Print, Fired, Inspired. It opens tomorrow night, 6-8, drop by if you can.

Well, this won't do, I'd better pull my boots on and get to work. Marky Mark's coming up later, it'll be good to catch up with him. I've much digging to do today, removing earth from the floor of my new sheds in readiness for knocking the doorway through on Friday with Different Dave. It's a heatwave here at the moment, so not ideal conditions for such labour - oh well, better than rain I think.

Have a lovely one everybody, catch you soon.

7 comments:

ang design said...

oh looks like a lovely time mr doug, diggin the new rick astley hair doo..

Brad Lail said...

hair cut looks nice and fresh. Keep up the good work and I am glad to know you arent giving up making pots.

Ron said...

Just looked at the ArtMill site. They've listed you as
Dug Fitch.
Hummmmm

Hannah said...

hahahaha Rick Astley, now you come to mention it Ang I know what you mean, chuckle chuckle.

Anonymous said...

Hi Doug,
Good to see you at the weekend, Sue's dead pleased with her plates thanks which are now with the rest on the dresser in the NEW KITCHEN, and the jug, which has a big bunch of flowers in on the stove.
Looks like you had as good a time as we did, and sold plenty of pots! Had my tea off one of the big plates, and I'm about to have a peice of cake now off one of the new ones..... See you soon.

Dave

doug Fitch said...

Never gonna give you up........

Was funny Ron, the gallery rang up in a state to apologise for spelling my name wrong. I could hear slipware potter John Pollex in the background saying 'good job you didn't spell mine wrong' tee hee.

Glad the plates hit the mark Derby Dava, lovely to see you both, hapy birthday Sue xx

Unknown said...

Just showed Damon your blog. He told me about your text. No apologies necessary ... feel free to try the other side in the summer!!!