Saturday 30 May 2009

Two days to firing time

Ooooooooooh man it's been a hectic time recently in Hollyford Potteryland, making frantic last minute pots for Monday's firing. I haven't even had time to write a blog post for a week it's been so crazy.

On the home front, Luke's been spending his half term holidays revising for his GCSE's and my 'little one', Joey turned fourteen on Thursday.



Different Dave called by yesterday to service my wheel as the bearing's become a bit noisy. He was the wood machine shop technician at the art college before we were both made redundant and used to be responsible for servicing all the machines, so he knows how to use a grease gun.



These are his two little ones, Kieran and Tayla, getting proper messy with some of the red stuff.



Some bowls I made earlier in the week. These will be unglazed on the outside and will hopefully pick up some good flame marks. I have black slip versions of the same thing.



This pot is for an order. The green will burn away, it's felt tip pen scribbles that I used to work out the composition. The 'flower trees' and birds are heavily influenced by the naive stylised designs typically found on old North Devon harvest jugs. There's another one that I still have to finish, It's been a mammoth project and has taken me hours....



and hours....



and hours....



and hours, scratching away, night after night, into the early hours. I really hope it comes out. It's about 16" tall, so there's a lot of surface area and there's more removed, than left behind.



Lots of glazing done, I'm off to the workshop now to finish it off. Marky Mark's meeting me there and we'll start the pack. I bricked the door up last night and lit a fire in the firebox, that, plus the scorching weather that's forecast for the next few days, should ensure a nice dry kiln.

Hannah's driving down from Scotland today and bringing some pots to fire too. Well I'd better get to it, catch you later.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

kids playing in clay... it doesn't get any better than that. love the big jug for your commission

ang design said...

man so that's what you've been up to, that's some deco work..

jbf said...

Love the jugs and am really taken with the bowls.

Gary's third pottery blog said...

Oh, this is terribly exciting...

Peter said...

Lovely work. Good luck with the firing.

Jude said...

Ican't wait tosee the bowls............

David said...

Hope the firing went well - that's a gorgeous jug - well worth the time and scraping.

potterboy said...

Well? You must have opened it by now...

Anonymous said...

These look wonderful Doug.
Here is a link to a MySpace site and blog for an online music mag you might find interesting. (if you have time!!!http://www.yrheartout.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Oh, love the band by the way. I'm looking forward to hearing you live someday.

Kent Harris said...

Well done Doug! That huge Jug is beautiful, I am excited to see it post firing. I hope all is well, the pots look great! Kent