Monday

Some pots at last! These are some puzzle jugs that I made last week and slipped this morning. They're all going to bear traditional mottoes and sgrafitto decoration. I've made various other pots, jugs, a tyg, mugs etc. These will all be ready in time for Art in Clay at Hatfield House, next month.



My good friend Matt who owns Hollyford, employed my boy Luke last week to fill some of the huge holes that have appeared in the lane that runs to the few dwellings and my workshop. I was so proud of Luke, it was a great sight to look along the lane, to see him there with a shovel and a barrow, doing his first real work other than working for me. He moved ten tonnes of chippings during two days of sorting out the drive. Today Matt employed him again to split logs which he'd never done before and he soon took to the axe without difficulty.



Then he got to work cutting back the edges of the track with a strimmer. He's going to be working at that for a few days to come. He's growing up really fast that boy.

More pots tomorrow.

My ugly mug

I've been sent a few pictures lately from last month's events, so here's a selection of them.






These two pictures were taken at The Contemporary Craft Fair at Bovey Tracey, by Susanne Haines of Dartmoor Magazine.



This shot(showing my classic crooked English smile), was also taken at Bovey by the owner of these jugs - thank you Kevin.



Tom Skeen's girlfriend Alis took this one at the Slipware weekend at Taena. The silly hat was keeping my head warm after my recent haircut - I hadn't seen my ears for five years until a couple of days before the picture was taken.





These were taken by Karen Edwards during my demo at Rufford.

Thank you all.

Luke

I really do need to make some pots as Art in Clay is fast approaching, but I'm still allowing shed building to distract me. Luke's been helping me, it's been good to have some time together. He's not done much of this kind of thing before, so I've been teaching him skills like hitting big nails really hard with a hammer.



We got the end wall of the kiln shed finshed today. It looks a bit odd on this picture, it's the angle of the camera I think/hope.

It'll be great if it's dry tomorrow, we've had torrential rain for the last two days, so everything's disgustingly muddy underfoot. If it is good weather tomorrow, Luke's going to be cracking on with painting the new bits. I may even get some making done, then this might revert to being the pottery blog it's supposed to be.

Happy Wednesday eveybody.

Fundamentally floored

Finished digging the floor out yesterday, so all set for breaking the wall down, then concreting the new floor next week.



It's been like an archaeological dig. I unearthed the cover for my chainsaw blade - hadn't seen that for ages, the world is a safer place.



I dug up lots of pots shards from the first few disasterous firings at Hollyford, when brown, bloated pots were flung in fury, through the window. There were some shockers. These lids are pretty dodgy - heavily thrown and carbon bloated, while other pots had the life squeezed out of them and were thrown ridiculously wafer thin.



The more earth I have to remove from the floor, the more new flowerbeds I have to create to accommodate it, not that that's a problem, I love my little garden. This one will hold a fruit tree which I hope to buy today.

A weekend off, no shows or rushing about all over the country, hurrah!

Roof

It was a bit hot for digging today, so I didn't start until this evening. Hopefully I'll finish it tomorrow with a bit of help from Luke.

Marky Mark and I did manage to finish the roof off however - hurrah!

Home

Hello again everybody.

Well I'm back in Devon after a wonderful few days in the Nottinghamshire sunshine. I had a thoroughly good time and met up with many of my pottery chums and got to make some lovely new friends too. It's been a hectic month - three shows in four weekends, so we've seen a fair bit of each other lately which has been great. This was an inspiring weekend and a top quality show that still remains my favourite event of the year.

In spite of the long hours and the many miles of travelling, the highs and the lows, successes and failures, the hand-to-mouth existence, I can't imagine ever doing anything other than make pots for a living, even though sometimes I kid myself that I could(I was all for giving it up a couple of weeks ago). I like the people I meet in the world of ceramics, too much to ever leave it.



The sun shone for us this year, the last two years we have endured torrential rain. A lot of pots found themselves new homes, thank you so much to those who bought them and thank you too, to those who didn't but took the time to talk about and understand my work - that's just as important.



My camera batteries went flat pretty much straight away, so I've pinched these pics from a couple of other blogs.

The first two here are from the remarkable wood turner and carver, Robin Wood's blog, check out his beautifully crafted work and interesting commentaries, if you haven't already.


Robin is the motivation behind The Heritage Crafts Association, which sets out 'to support and promote heritage crafts as a fundamental part of our living heritage.'

Please follow the link and take a look at the site and if you will, please sign up to be a supporter of this important cause,(which is free). Thanks to Robin, the plight of our craft heritage is now the subject of debate in Westminster.




My good chum Blogger Andrew took this shot of crazy potters, left to right Blogger Dan Finnegan from the States, Arwyn Jones, Toff Milway and dear ol' Paul Young. A lovely bunch of chaps bless 'em.



In spite of my fears before I left, my demo seemed to go fine. There were quite a few folk there, so I didn't look past the second row, where Andrew and Hannah were sitting. This picture was also lifted from Andrew's blog, you can find more shots from the show there of various potters' work and also brief a video clip from my rambling demo, which I apparently delivered with my flies undone - oops.


It's taken a while to get back to this blog. On Monday I was helping my friend and photographer Johnny Thompson to erect a huge prefabricated studio in the baking sunshine and yesterday I went to Plymouth to deliver some pots to the Artmill Gallery. I'm part of a group exhibition called Draw, Print, Fired, Inspired. It opens tomorrow night, 6-8, drop by if you can.

Well, this won't do, I'd better pull my boots on and get to work. Marky Mark's coming up later, it'll be good to catch up with him. I've much digging to do today, removing earth from the floor of my new sheds in readiness for knocking the doorway through on Friday with Different Dave. It's a heatwave here at the moment, so not ideal conditions for such labour - oh well, better than rain I think.

Have a lovely one everybody, catch you soon.

Off to Rufford

Well I'm just about to hit the road, to fight my way through the Glastonbury traffic and head off up to Nottinghamshire and Earth & Fire at Rufford Abbey Country Park.

Rufford's probably my favourite show of the year, it certainly feels like it's the most prestigious. This year though I'm feeling a little more trepidation than usual as I have to give a jug making demo on Sunday afternoon. I don't know why this one seems more scary than others, I've done loads of demos this year and should be getting used to it. It's one of those ones where you're mic-ed up and there's a guy sitting on the side of the stage with a microphone asking loads of questions - as if this stuff isn't hard enough to do in private, let alone in front of a throng of people. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be over in a flash - just three days to worry about it.

I'm disappointed to be missing my older son Luke as he goes off in his glad rags to his end of school ball tomorrow night. We took him out a couple of weeks ago and bought him a new suit, since the picture was taken he's had a tidy haircut(which has pleased his Mother no end) - whatever happened to my little baby? He finished his last exam yesterday - now the long wait until the end of August to find out how he's got on. I think he'll do well, he deserves to, he's worked very hard.



Thankfully I'm not having to camp this weekend as I'll be staying with an old college chum Brigsy who lives nearby. Svend and Nic and Sabine will be staying too, so it'll be a house full of potters. I really don't enjoy camping much these days - I'm getting soft in my old age. Last weekend at the slipware event the camping facilities were very, very basic, plus my hotwater bottle leaked and I forgot to put the square thing on top of the tent and it poured with rain, so I was soaked from all directions - a comfortable bed is very much more appealing.

Well I can procrastinate no longer, I'd better go and leave my rural retreat and face the real world and a busy motorway. I'll report back next week. Happy weekends full of fun everybody, take care.

Kiln's, pots and Blogger Dan

Tom Skeen came to the event with his girlfriend Alice. It was lovely to see Tom again - he came to me for a while last year, when he made this pot from clay that he dug from the woods. I fired it for him, along with some other pots that he made and delivered them to him at the weekend. He left this one beside my car when he left which was really sweet of him. He hadn't been making pots long when he made this pot, but it's clearly visible that he has a natural understanding of good form. This combined with the direct manner in which he manipulates clay, suggest that he's going to be a very fine potter. Thanks Tom very much, note Kipper giving it some scrutiny.



This pot was made by the fair hand of the excellent Mr Nigel Lambert who was also demoing at the weekend. I really like his work a lot and this piece is a very welcome addition to my collection. It was good to spend some time with him and to get an axe swinging lesson(he's a former forester)



And here's a beautiful pot that will be added to my special shelf of bloggers' pots, made by the great Dan Finnegan from Virginia USA. I saw this pot when it was freshly made in the States on Dan's blog, so I'm thrilled to bits to own it.



Matt, Hannah, Andrew and I skived off during the afternoon on Sunday and took a half hours drive to Toff milway's Conderton Pottery, where Blogger Dan is staying. It was great to meet him - magic even. What a fantastic beard and a top man - it felt like we all knew him already. We'll see him again this weekend at Earth and Fire at Rufford, I look forward to that.



Here's my good chum Paul Young taking a break.



This is Sean Casserly, whose workshop was the venue for the event. Here he's firing a tunnel type raku kiln that he built.



And this is the masterpiece of modern engineering that Matt and I lashed together last week from an oil drum. Would you believe it, it actually worked.

That's all for now, time for bed, goodnight all.

The remarkable Mr Smith

Here are some pictures of Peter Smith taken during his demo.



Peter came to give a lecture and demo when Nic and I were students at Derby College, back in the early eighties and completely turned our heads.



His influence has stuck with us both ever since, so it was wonderful to see and hear him again.




He uses a lot of grit in his clay - his clay has similar properties to the brick clay blend that I use.



He uses pipettes with rubber tubes attached to suck up slip, then expels the wet slip in a free-flowing, but considered manner, across the surface of the pot.



I admire the fact that he has no intention of making his work 'pretty'. As he maintained when applying his asymmetrical decoration, 'it's not my responsibility to make people feel comfortable'. Love it

Pictures from the weekend

Here are a few pics from the weekend, I'll post some more later.



The assembled delegates during a demo that Paul Young and I did together.



Peter Smith, a big hero of mine



Matt demonstrating how to make oval dishes



Hannah sliptrailing.

More later, off to work now, have a lovely day everybody.