Thursday 8 July 2010

Old blog

An old blog post I started ages ago and never finished, thought I'd stick it on anyway!

Well the village play's all finished and the stage is packed away until the panto in the spring. I really enjoyed doing the play and have felt a bit empty ever since, now that it's all done. It's been a lot of work, two evenings a week for months, but the cast has been a good group of people to spend time with. We gave a different performance every night as we rambled off-script, but nobody seemed to worry too much and the audiences enjoyed it. It was all a bit odd really, having to perform much of the play on stage in my boxer shorts - not a pretty sight I promise you.


So back into making pots for Art in Clay. I've been making lots of pressed dishes in recent days, inspired by old English Country Pottery pieces. I made a whole load a while back, but they all cracked.


Daisies in a field..................



............that inspired the dotty flowers on here

We haven't had any proper rainfall in weeks and everythings starting to look a pit parched. Here are oats in a field on the way home last night.


More daisies and grass.......

more wet slip


An old dish

Some more old Staffordshire dishes. I particularly like the way the decoration has been cut off on the top dish after it's been placed over the mould.

Patterned dish, the background will fire black with yellow dots and orange swirls, trailed in clay from the stream.
An old dish with a crazy cockerel.

More wet slippy slabs, drying out ready to be slumped over the moulds.

Some dishes drying out ready to bisc fire.
Well that was all ages ago and really disjointed, I've got a bit behind with blogging recently. Got Alex visiting at the moment helping me sort the kiln out, more about that later. Just having a cuppa with Cookie, got to fly, good to be back - more later!

2 comments:

Peter said...

Beautiful photos Doug. Really love the "Daisies in a field" one in particular. I could imagine pitching an easel there and doing an oil painting up to my knees in flowers! Wonderful!

I was pleased to read, on your comment on my blog, that Jeff was coming over to "glaze his chickens". Being of unsound mind, I got a laugh out of that as I imagined strange country practices! However, I do know what you mean, thank goodness! It will be so exciting for Jeff to have something progress towards the firing.

Robin Wood said...

Nice post Doug. Those 2 old Staffordshire dishes in the book are just heavenly. I love the freedom and simplicity of the trailing, and no doubt they were made at speed and sold for pennies. I would so love one exactly like that for past bakes.