Today we got a couple of large vessels out of the kin. They are 40cm high, glazed in a copper/barium glaze with an overlay of rutile.
On parts of the copper base, we have some red coming through - part of the reduction process.
A lovely firing, but we still have the big square kiln to unpack tomorrow.....
At last we have enough pots to fire in the large kiln.
Today we have spent all day glazing pots. Most of these are to fulfill orders from shops that sell online.
On the bottom shelf are some dishes going to the Cosy Cottage soap company, and next to them some coffee mugs going to the Dog and Hat - an online coffee business.
On the next shelf up are some more soap dishes - they ordered 200! and at the back some little bowls with mice for Art and Soul in Beverley.
In the brown trays are some candle snuffers which we hope to sell ourselves after lockdown.
Then on the top shelf are some little pots ordered by a gin making company in York.
Tomorrow the kiln will be fired.
I was clearing out some cupboards today and I came across my old stamp collection books! I first starting saving stamps when I was at primary school. At first I collected "world stamps", then just British ones before collecting first day covers until I went to University in 1972.
What I found interesting in the books was how the political world has altered- so many countries have changed their changed their names, through either annexation, war or independence.
But what fascinated me the most was the page of German stamps. I must have started collecting stamps before the Berlin wall was built and the introduction at the top of the page mentions East Germany and West Germany.
Then two stamps caught my eye at the bottom of the page. Two stamps - one million deutschmarks and five million deutschmarks. They must have been issued between the wars when Germany suffered from hyper inflation. This would have passed me by at the age of 8!!
So---- an interesting day, both geographical and historical.....
Well --- It's mid Novemebr and already the Christmas adverts are appearing on TV. We are busy making things that we can only really sell at Christmas - Angels and Rudolph the Reindeer candle snuffers.
We make candle snuffers all the year round - badgers, dogs, cats, mice and numerous characters, but at Christmas we make these ones:
We are hosting a selling event at the pottery for all the "Fangfoss Creatives" - to take place after Lockdown finishes. There are several people in Fangfoss who make things and are finding it difficult to sell their products at the moment. We hope this will help....
Today we seemed to be working harder than we have done all week. It seemed that everything needed something doing to the pots - sticking handles on, engraving patterns, sticking on emblems and mice...
These are the garlic pots I was working on. The embossed emblems are made by pressing the clay into a mould, peeled off and then stuck onto the front of the pot.
These pots are stock items for a shop in Beverley called Art and Soul. The "Mousie Range" sells so well there that I want to build up a supply ready for when lockdown is finished.
Last night I made a huge error - I was trying to update our website, when I pressed a button and deleted most of it..... I tried for ages to get the web site back to how it was, but eventually had to give up.
This morning I decided to start all over again - taking pictures of products that I had accidentally deleted from the gallery, and adding new ones. I couldn't get it completely the same as it was before - there are no pictures on the side where you can click which takes you to some other part of the site - but I did it.
All our current products are up there with accompanying pictures....
Check it out - www.fangfosspottery.co.uk
Cheers!!!
