A trip to Bideford

It's been busy times during the past few days, I'll write about it in more detail later. Just got in from Bideford after the launch of the Reg Lloyd Collection of slipware - 500 pieces of slipware, some ancient, some relatively contemporary, mostly from Devon and all recently acquired by the Burton Art Gallery, Bideford. Here's a report about it, thank you to Hannah Wingrave for your lovely words.

I'll be back there tomorrow as there is a conference to celebrate the launch of the collection and I'm on the discussion panel, which is to be chaired by Sandy Brown. Also on the panel, my good friend Mr Alex McErlain. I'll report back and try and get some photos of the pots if I'm allowed. As it turned out tonight, I chatted to so many people that I didn't even get into the room where the pots are, before it was time to come home - doh! I'll have a proper look tomorrow when it's less hectic.

Spring's here at last and the walks home from work have been amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing.

I've been making tiles. There was a Mistle thrush in the hedgerow earlier in the week in fine voice, so here he is in squirty slip - I'm not entirely sure he'd recognise himself.

Tiles - some of these will work, some possibly won't, I tried a few experiments, but I'm making lots of them so there will be plenty to choose from.

Mugs and bowls. I've got 36 mugs and 24 bowls. Made jugs today too and a puzzle jug.

Luke with his completed sculpture - I think it's brilliant, I'm very proud of him. I'm very proud of both of my boys.

Well that's all for now, much to write but it'll have to wait as I've got to go to bed and have an early start in the morning.

Goodnight all

A Japanese Passion: the pottery of Edward Hughes

‘A Japanese Passion: the pottery of Edward Hughes’.
8th March - 12th June 2010


EDWARD HUGHES (October 16, 1953 - March 31, 2006) was one of Britain’s very finest potters. His life’s work was dedicated to making pots for others to use and he spoke about this with a passion.

'I entrust my pots into the hands of the customer for use in their everyday lives, where the act of use is every bit as creative and important as that of the maker. The maker, the pot and the user become one in "the beauty of use'.

Hughes was born in Wallasey in 1953. He studied ceramics at Bath Academy of Art. On graduation he applied for a two-year scholarship in Japan, where he studied pottery at Kyoto City University of Arts.

In 1979, he held his first one-man show and decided to stay in Japan, setting up a pottery at Shiga, where he remained for five years. He achieved considerable recognition in Japan, winning awards and being elected to membership of Kokugakai.



Hughes returned to England in 1984 and established a new studio first at Renwick in Cumbria and later at Isel, close to Lake Bassenthwaite. Some of his finest work was made during the later years working in Cumbria. His life was tragically cut short when in March 2006 he died in a climbing accident, after he had gone walking alone and the weather changed abruptly.

Soyetsu Yanagi; writing in ‘The Unknown Craftsman’; made reference to the Japanese passion for using quality handmade pottery and to their equal passion for earthenware of the kind produced in England during the eighteenth century. Edward Hughes shared these passions and they lie at the root of understanding his work. In turn, Hughes had a real passion for Japan where he found in the Japanese people a respect for all he was trying to express through his pottery.


Alex McErlain, Manchester Metropolitain University 2010

Luke's sculpture

Here's a short burst of my boy Luke getting to grips with his material, making a huge clay sculpture from clay that he dug from the woods.

Happy Easter all.

Ann Van Hoey

This is a great little film from the Film Festival about the beautiful work of Belgian ceramist Ann Van Hoey, who I met in Montpellier.

Mugs

24 mugs handles and srigged today, each with a different design.



Off to pay some tax to Mr Darling

For dear Mr Darling and his cider tax - boooooooooo

Thank you

I'm a much happier bunny today, thank you for all your supportive comments. The mind of the middle-aged man is not always a good place.


Guess what Dave and Sue, got started making your tiles today with Michael Cardew's tile mould that I rescued from Wenford Bridge. I post this picture for Ang who asked to see it a while back.


And here are some of the tiles. More of these to make tomorrow, then lots of decorating to do.


I had the most wonderful walk home this evening, albeit a baptism of hail. It was really wild and windy, but just what I needed, a good bit of thinking time. I'm looking forward to seeing the spring arrive in close detail. That said, snow forecast tomorrow.

My favourite flower, the primrose. The Devon lanes are full of these beautiful, delicate blooms in the spring and it lifts my heart and spirit. That's all for now, it's bed time.

Thank you everybody, goodnight xxx

Glum :(

I've felt really glum since I got home from France - it was so good out there, I suppose I'm bound to feel a bit flat now that everything's back to normal :(

It's good to have new pots in the freshly painted 'showroom' :)

but to my eyes right now, the shelves are half empty rather than half full :(

The glaze quality on the 'Elizabethan Lady' jug is beautiful :)

but the big crack in her side isn't :(

Moan moan moan, the gearbox destroyed itself on my car last week, so that's the end of that, no car :(

Sooooooooooooooooo....The positive from this is that Spring is around the corner and much is happening in the hedgerows. I made my best pots last time that I was walking to and from the workshop, as the mud and the plants of Devon countryside find their way into my work :)

My good friend, woodcarver and fellow Love Daddy, Paul 'Cookie' Cook has offered me lifts a few mornings a week - that's the uphill, half awake bit, so I'll probably take the ride on those mornings, then walk home in the evenings. Now that the clocks have changed, it'll be daylight :)

I'll see how it goes and how much I miss the car before replacing it. We have two cars, Hil uses the other one for getting to work, in the opposite direction, but on days when I really need a car, I can drop her off and use that one.

This is more jolly, I've had my older son Luke with me at Hollyford in the last few days which has been cool. He's working on a school sculpture project using the variety of clays diggable here on site.


He's making a huge amonite, based on the Fibonacci Sequence and drawing influence from the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy :)

For my part, I prepared lots of clay today, ready to get making tomorrow. Perhaps I'll post something less gloomy then. I can't be so fed up or I wouldn't be able to post at all, so don't worry, but right now I have to say, a nice easy nine to five with no responsibility, no pressure and a regular wage every week looks very attractive!

Tomorrow's another day, hopefully it'll be a constructive one.

Nouvelles d'hier aujourd'hui

Home again after a brilliant, long weekend in France. I feel absolutely exhausted and have spent much of today sleeping - surprising as most of the weekend I've been sitting down in a darkened room, but we kept long hours and I didn't get home until the early hours this morning, so there's my excuse.



These are the guys who took me there, John Davies on the left, who edited the film, director Alex McErlain on the right and Stephen Yates, camera man, taking up the rear. Huge, huge thanks to these chaps.



On the first evening we went to an exhibition of ceramics and glass at the Montpellier Musee Languedocien. In the background is Marta, who travelled with us on the plane to France - some of you may know her from the CPA shop in London.

The museum was full of amazing, ancient pottery. I had photographed a lot of it, before a very polite man informed me photography was not allowed - so you haven't seen this picture ok?!



Here are some of the contemporary exhibits, mixed in amongst the antiquities.



This was a large porcelain piece, made by soaking fabric in slip, the fabric burning away in the kiln. I remember firing student's work made by this method when I was an art college technician - it's so fragile, a technician's nightmare.



This work consisted of a number of glass baubles placed on the wire innards of a mattress. I found myself looking up to the chandelier above, to see where these 'bulbs' had dropped from. The springs related well to the surrounding furniture and made me consider what may lie beneath the upholstery of the chairs - not sure if that was what was intended, but that's how it was for me.

We then went to the opening night of the festival and the first films, a collection of remarkable animations, presumably painted on glass, by artist Florence Miailhe and a spectacular dance sequence, filmed on a seemingly huge shard pile - some of this stuff has to hurt.

I saw fascinating films and met wonderful people. The festival was attended by film makers, artists and delegates from all over the world. The French government clearly value their crafts, certainly more than my government does, (read this article)and the festival must have been a heavily subsidised event. We were put up in a good hotel and wined and dined in style by the organizers. I was also looked after really well by Alex, John and Steve, who were great company and we enjoyed a few beers every evening in the hotel bar.


The venue for the film festival was a huge building called Le Corum, in the centre of Montpellier, situated at the end of this avenue of beautiful plane trees.


It's a vast building, an opera house in fact, with many seats, almost filled to capacity for the duration of the festival.


Looking up to the heights of this ceiling made me feel quite giddy - so I didn't do it too often!


Here's the woman who introduced the films, in front of the huge screen.



These are some of the good people I met. Behind me and John is Florence Bruyas, a talented ceramic artist. Beside her, her sister Raphaelle, a film maker, who made this film about Florence. I'm afraid my French isn't very good, so I can't follow much of the dialogue, but the work and the imagery are beautiful. This was the film that was shown immediately before Hollyford Harvest.

Beside Raphaelle is a Canadian potter, Jody Greenman-Barber, who made a very entertaining short film, titled Clay Play, combining the rhythm of making on the wheel, with dance.

Next to Jody and her husband is Caroline Andrin, a professor from Belgium, who works with fabric and porcelain, cutting and re-sewing found items of clothing such as gloves, which are then used as moulds, within which slipcast forms are created. Between Caroilne and Alex, is potter Ann Van Hoey, also from Belgium whose film you can see here.

Hollyford Harvest was well received. I felt very nervous as the opening sequence appeared on the vast screen, followed the sight and sound of the Love Daddies. I hate hearing myself speak, so I was cringing somewhat. Subtitles in French had been added so the predominantly French audience could understand what I was saying.



I was a lot hairier when it was filmed and had managed to stay relatively anonymous - the picture in the catalogue was also shot pre-haircut - here's somebody a few rows in front looking at the catalogue. After the screening, our names were announced and we each had to stand in turn, Alex, John, Steve, then me, then we had to wave to the huge audience, in response to their applause. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life - exciting, scary, kind of nice, but kind of odd too - I didn't know what to do, part of me wanted to sit down immediately, but instead I put my thumbs up to the crowd, then worried that it may be a rude gesture in France - they didn't seem offended fortunately, so I did it some more! I had to pose for photos and even sign an autograph - it was all very flattering. If anybody out there would like to purchase a copy of the film, you can get it from John Davies, right here.

And so the festival drew to a close and we wandered back to the hotel in the rain.

Yesterday morning we checked out of the hotel and set off into Montpellier to see the sights.

We stumbled across a number of antique shops, selling beautiful old French earthenware pots.

If only I were a wealthier man, I would have brought every piece home with me!

Ooooooooooooooo!!!


Then it was time to go home, so we headed to the airport and the cold and wet and grey of old Blighty. Thank you so much Alex, John and Steve for a wonderful experience.

So there we go, I did it, left my hiding place in my shed in the countryside, survived the aeroplane experience, saw a bit more of the world - and I loved every minute of it.

Look out the world, I hope I'll be coming to see some more of you again soon.

Catch up

Hello the world
It's been a busy few days here and blogging has fallen behind, but here are some pictures of what's been going on. I'll start with yesterday and work backwards.

Hannah and I unpacked the kiln yesterday morning before Hannah headed back on the train to Scotland.

It wasn't the best of firings - there were quite a few losses due to damp in the kiln which hadn't been fired since last June and that did some strange things to some of the slips and glazes - but it certainly wasn't the worst and there were some pieces that came out really well. I was expecting damp to be a problem, so no surprises there. I'll post more pictures of the pots when I've got better images. Now I need to get stuck in and make another kiln load to mix up with this one so that I'll have pots with a wider diversity of tone and colour. The kiln will be lovely and dry for the next firing. I made a number of modifications to the inside of the chamber for this firing, the aim being, to achieve a more even temperature throughout(the top of the kiln tends to be much hotter than the bottom) and it worked, so I'm very pleased with that.

Earlier in the week I had a visit from Tony and Fliss Mugridge. Tony is the country's last itinerant brickmaker and runs a brickworks in Shropshire. They kindly delivered me some mugs and some clay samples. My clay is made from a blend of locally sourced clay and commercial clay. I've been using a brick clay from Exeter, but sadly the brickworks has now closed and the supply has come to an end, so I'm looking for a suitable replacement. I also use a clay that I dig from the woods opposite the workshop, but have always struggled to get enough to make its use viable as the complete clay body. I'm rather lucky however, that the owner of a neighbouring field has just given me consent to dig clay from his field.

On Saturday, I was being filmed as the subject for another documentary, by two Sky News cameramen who are making a number of programmes about ceramics, with a view to offering the finished series to the Sky Arts channel. Here we are, filming the clay digging sequence in the woods.

While I was busy filming, Hannah, bless her, was doing all my glazing for me.

She's been a tremendous help and I couldn't have done without her this weekend. We packed the kiln, finishing the pack in the early hours.

We got up early the next day to start the fire and she stoked all day while I was swanning around in the woods filming. We finally finished at 1.30 am, exhausted.

Just to prove that I did do some work myself.

Here we are about to film a sequence about kneading clay

Nathan, on the left, Duncan on the right and in the centre, Blogger Paul . These guys are used to chasing all over the world after the likes of Gordon Brown and will soon be off to South Africa to cover the World Cup, so my rural workshop must have provided something of a contrast to the norm. Here they're planning the filming of the throwing sequence. Blogger Paul fed me the lines to which I reponded during the filming. It's pretty nerve racking having to speak to camera whilst throwing a pot, knowing that what you're saying and doing might be scruitinized in the future by a wider audience via tv, but these guys calmed me down and made it good fun. I'd also the benefit of having had this experience before, during the filming of Hollyford Harvest, the film made last year, about which I shall write more during this post.

Here's Paul enjoying a cuppa from a mug sent to me by my Secret Santa, Jim Gottuso.

Marion, Paul's partner did a wonderful job of keeping us all fed and the wedging bench became banquet table to the hungry firing and filming team.

There was much going on outside too, as Different Dave came along with a concrete mixer and poured the slab for the next phase of my building project. This will provide me with an undercover area where I can chainsaw wood. I use a lot of salvage wood which contains nails, so it'll be good to have a sweepable area. The old tin shed behind will be taken down in the next few weeks and will be replaced with a new woodshed.

And this is my mate Frank, aka Andrew Grundon, the esteemed traditional signwriter, who designed and applied this lovely gold leaf sign to my 'showroom' door. Shortly I'm off to Hollyford to sort out this little room which has been used as a dumping ground recently. If I get time today, I'll paint up the dresser I built to display the finished pots, so that if anybody might like to come and see them next week, there will be somewhere to display them.

Tomorrow I head off to my brother's place just outside Plymouth for the night. I have to get up very early on Friday morning to take a taxi to Plymouth Airport, where I'll catch a flight to Gatwick. At Gatwick I'll meet up with Alex McErlain and the rest of the team who put together the film Hollyford Harvest. We'll then board a flight to Montpellier, France and to the Festival International Du Film sur L'Argile et Le Verre, where Hollyford Harvest will be shown on this vast screen to an audience of 2000 people. That's quite scary. I'll report back next week. In the meantime, have a lovely weekend et bonne chance, au revoir mes amis.