Gerry Grant

Gerry Grant
On The Wheel

Monday 30 November 2020

Welcoming other makers into the pottery...

We're getting ready to re-open and are going to  welcome some other artists into our studio over the weekend.

We are hosting a festive weekend for a few artists who live in the village and like us have been unable to go to exhibitons etc. So along with the pottery there will be paintings, prints, cards and other gifts on sale. 

There will be plenty of space as we will be using the upstairs and downstairs of the old school.

These are some photos of the work that will be on show:-





















Friday 27 November 2020

And now we're going to be in tier 3.....

 So now we're going to be put into the High Risk band of the Corona Virus - Tier 3. It seems so unfair that we live at the far west of East Yorkshire in a rural area with few cases and are lumped in with Hull in the East 35 miles away. But we're not the only ones in the country feeling like this.

So to take our minds off things we went  a walk today near Malton - after delivering some pots to the Cosy Cottage Soap Company there.

We went to a small village called Menethorpe - it sounds as though it could be of Anglo Scandanavian origin with a name ending in "thorpe". It's a pretty village, though nothing outstanding, nestled in a little valley with a stream running through it. The walk takes you through fields on one side of the stream and comes back on the other.

It blew the cobwebs away and cheered us up a bit. And then - when we got home there was a bunch of flowers waiting for me on the doorstep - no note who they were from. But lovely.....




Monday 23 November 2020

Autumn leaves

 

  
 Its that time of year when all the leaves from all the trees in our village land in our garden! 

   I don't know whether the wind around here causes a sort of vortex that swirls into our drive, but we always get piles of leaves against the house and pottery.
   
 
 
   So, today since it was nice weather we went out and swept them up and put them in the incinerator (that we use for pit firings!) and burnt them. Then we pruned the apple trees and the weeping pears. 
 
  It looks a lot tidier now but we will have to do it again next week I think!


Sunday 22 November 2020

Working at the Park

 Our village has a wonderful park - it is funded entirely by the village and managed by a committee of volunteers. There is always work that needs doing down there, so today we were down there catching up on things in the sunshine.


We have had some new outdoor gym equipment installed and we needed to put up a sign saying it was for adults use only. Depsite it being up only a few minutes, there were still children on it!




We have a dog agility area in the Park, but the dog's see saw keeps getting broken because people use it despite signs telling them not to. Gerry has hopefully found a stronger way of attaching it.

Then he removed the information signs to carry out repairs on them at the pottery.



This year the park has been really well used. People are using it from outside the area and it is causing a problem with parking in the village. I don't know what we can do about it - we are a victim of our own success.

Saturday 21 November 2020

Sock it to me baby!!!

 I love knitting socks - all my family have lots of them. So, during lockdown I have been using up all my spare wool and making little socks that can be used to hang on a Christmas tree with perhaps a sweet in them!


 

The pattern I used is a free one available on the internet. What makes it good is that it can be knitted on 2 needles (socks are usually knitted in the round on 4 needles)

https://littlecottonrabbits.typepad.co.uk/free_knitting_patterns

I hope you have as much fun as I have had. If you get stuck email me - lyn@fangfosspottery.co.uk.

Friday 20 November 2020

I'm a little teapot.....

I'm a little teapot, short and stout, Here's my handle, here's my spout - a familiar rhyme to most people!!!

Gerry has always liked making teapots - experimenting with their design. But a teapot must pour well and not dribble..

These are the latest editions to his range......

           

Here are some earlier designs:














Wednesday 18 November 2020

Pick up a Penguin...

 

 

These are our latest little animals! At only 5cm high, looking cute and costing just £2.50 we hope they will sell well at Christmas. They certainly did at Potfest....


lyn@fangfosspottery.co.uk

Monday 16 November 2020

A successful "reduction" firing

 A great day today as we unpacked the kiln. Lovely copper red pots for the Dog and Hat, green ones for the Cosy Cottage Soap Company, white ones for the Yorkshire Explorer Distillery and lots more.

This is our gas kiln. It is a down draft kiln - meaning that the flames come in from the bottom, go round the kiln and then are forced into the chimney that starts at the bottom.

It is at the top where we get most of the "reduction" - the copper in the glaze turns from red to green.

The rod sticking down from the roof of the kiln is the pyrometer - it measures the temperature in the kiln. We also use cones to check the temperature distribution around the kiln.



These are the red pots for the online coffee company called the Dog and Hat. They came from the front of the kiln at the top where there was an area of heavy reduction. To get a reduction atmosphere in the kiln you have to put in more gas than oxygen, so this can only happen if you have a gas kiln. 

The results can be lovely.

Sunday 15 November 2020

Large vases from the kiln

 


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.....

Friday 13 November 2020

Kiln fodder???

 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.

Thursday 12 November 2020

A stamp collection....

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.....


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 







Wednesday 11 November 2020

Christmassy things......


 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:

 

 

Monday 9 November 2020

Hosting a selling event...

 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....



Sunday 8 November 2020

Busiest day this week?

 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.

 

 

I had to make some little mice to go on the cheese dishes and the vinegar jars.

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.

Saturday 7 November 2020

If at first you don't succeed....

 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!!!

Thursday 5 November 2020

Back into Lockdown

Well today is the first day of a month of lockdown. We have a few orders to get out to companies who trade online, so that is keeping us going.

A new initiative by a shop called Art and Soul in Beverley is to provide a click and collect service for people ordering from their website. So on Monday we took a lot of "mousie things" along to their shop so that they could sell them via online.

This is already working and today we have sold three of the bowls and a vinegar jar.

Please promote the shop by any of these means:-

www.artandsoulhub.co.uk

FB @artandsoulhub

Instagram @artandsoulhub


Wednesday 4 November 2020

Where have we been?

 I haven't put a post up for a few days because we've been away in Penrith doing a show called "Potfest in the Pens".

 

The cattle market was transformed into an exhibition area for about 80 potters- each one having their own stall. This year every alternate stall was used for social distancing purposes and everyone was "masked up".

It's such a good job that it wasn't held this coming weekend or it would have had to be cancelled due to the fact that England is closing down for a month and going into Lockdown.....

If you are reading this, you can order from us by looking at our website - www.fangfosspottery.co.uk

 In the meantime, do keep reading this blog - leave comments if you want to, and tell me where you are reading it from!