Tuesday 9 June 2009

Back in the land of blog

I'm back!

It's been ages since I've posted on here.

Since my last post, Hannah's been to stay, we've fired the kiln, been to stay with Nic for a few days and exhibited and demonstrated at the Contemporary Craft Fair.



Here's Hannah lighting up the kiln. We fired it last Monday - the hottest day of the year. It was scorching, way too hot to be firing that's for sure.



On Tuesday we took the day off and went up to Shebbear to visit my great friend and hero Clive Bowen for lunch. Hannah hadn't been to his place before. It's beautiful there, Clive's wife Rosie is a fantastic gardener - the whole place is inspirational. I used to spend a lot of time at Clive's place, packing and firing his huge two chamber wood kiln, but missed the last two firings, so it was great to be there again after so long. Clive's been a huge influence on what I do, both in terms of what I make and why I want to make it. Behind Hannah is the chimney of his huge bottle kiln.



We unpacked the hot pots on Wednesday. Here they are strewn across the lawn.



Wednesday was also Marky Mark's birthday.



It was an interesting firing, with a range of tones that were more orange than the ambers of the last kiln load, so the two batches of pots mixed well together. I should have taken a picture to demonstrate that, these two large jugs are from the latest firing.




The sgrafitto jug has gone to a new home. It came out really well thankfully. There's always a huge risk firing with a naked flame and this jug took hours to decorate, so I was somewhat relieved to get it out successfully.



Here are some close ups of the naive birds and flowers.








I built this dry stone wall while we were firing and today back-filled it with earth that I dug out of the new kiln shed floor. I'm desperate to get the new sheds finished some time soon so that I can get the workshop into some kind of better order - it's chaos at the moment.

Well that's about it other than to say thank you to the folk who bought my pots at the weekend, thank you to Nic and Sabine for putting me up during the last few days and thank you to Hannah for the great company and for coming down and helping with the firing. Back to making pots tomorrow and who knows, maybe even some more blogging.

10 comments:

Kent Harris said...

Good firing it looks like! I love Clives place, is he still messing around with porcelain pots every now and then? By the way the big jug with deco turned out awesome! Kent

Ron said...

Beautiful pots Doug!

ang design said...

and a big welcome back to ya...great to see the big jug survived and the groovy birdage too..

Jude said...

yeah! welcome back!
great jug, so pleased it survived.

Paul Jessop said...

Crikey - You let Hannah hold the matches. your lucky to still be alive!!!!.

Fantastic looking pots realy butes.

Brad Lail said...

Great pots! I really enjoy the amber look. Good to have you back in the land of blog! Glad to hear all is well. I need to catch you on skype soon.

doug Fitch said...

Mornin' all, thanks. I need to get some better pics really. I had a chat with Clive about his porcelain Kent and he says he's not going to do it any more - it just didn't do it for him I think. I guess with any of these things, if you excel at something because you've been doing it for years, nothing else quite makes the grade - well not without a lot of experimentation and trial and error. Have a good day all. You have some beautiful new pots on your blog Kent, really lovely stuff

Unknown said...

NIce post Doug. I visited Clive last time I was in the area. I loved his place. He and Rose were so hospitable. They were preparing for a trip to Japan where he was giving lectures. How did that trip go for him?

doug Fitch said...

Hi Rod, Rose is great isn't she? And Clive is my biggest hero. His shows went really well - three sell-outs in fact.

Anonymous said...

Stunning jug. I wish we had more slipware at the Leach. I'm getting sick of the sight of reduced stoneware and F*****g porcelain!!!!!!!!!