Juggedy juggedy

Morning all. Yesterday was another long day. The school bus broke down in the morning, so Joe needed a lift to school in Crediton and Luke, a ride to college in Exeter with all of his art works for his final assessment. He's done some amazing paintings, I'll blog about that another day. I had to wait for Luke for a while, so took the opportunity to visit the old pots in Exeter Museum, which is just near his college. They have a good collection there of locally made pots - the medieval ones and the later, North Devon slipware, do it for me of course. Anyway, the upshot of all that stuff meant that I wasn't in work until after lunchtime and had to work late to make up for it. As you can see from the little film that I shot on the way home from Exeter, the countryside is full of colour at the moment - the yellow of the Oilseed Rape in the fields and the pinks of the Campions against the fresh, bright greens of new spring foliage in the hedgerows. The views are from the top of Raddon Hill, which we have to traverse from here to get to town. It's always a spectacular vista from the top of Raddon, whatever the season, but in the spring it's just wooohooooooooooooo. The jug on the film took me hours to decorate - it was 11 pm before I was out of there. Decorating in this manner is a journey, which begins with vertical lines, that are then filled in-between, the design developing as I go along. It's inspired by the density of foliage in the spectacular high banks that line the lanes around here. I had an interesting conversation with the painter Simon Jowitt during our recent exhibition in Cambridge about the use of such geometry to create depth and perspective. This pot's also reminiscent of a carved porcelain cup that Adam gave me on his recent visit - I hadn't realized that until I was well underway, but looking at that cup helped me resolve some questions as to where certain lines should be - thanks Adam! Off to work then for another long day. I think Marky Mark may be joining me this evening. I'm putting the hours in at the moment as I would like as many pots as possible to chose from for the forthcoming summer shows. Also I have to make some big stuff for an order and need to be able to afford the time to get it wrong before getting it right, with the reassurance of a body of stock on the shelves. Many handles, much decorating and hopefully freshly thrown pots by the end of today. Bye for now, have a good day all.