A difficult painting job.

 Over the last month we have been having repairs to the house and pottery - just minor ones, like getting a few tiles replaced, or having the barge boards replaced where they had gone rotten. But the cost of having scaffolding put up is horrific, so we decided to have the whole lot painted at the same time. We have overhanging eaves on the house and pottery which is proving quite a hard task to paint - but we are nearly there! Just in time to welcome back the housemartins. I haven't seen any yet.

To allow access onto the apex of the pottery roof, we have had to open the sky light in the kiln room and put the ladders through that -attaching to one of the shelving supports.

Really tiny animals!!!

 Are these the samllest animals ever? They are just a few made by someone in our village as part of our "pottery@home" project. To give some sort of scale, I have put a £1 coin next to them.

It's black and white..

 It's not often that we make things in black or white, but we have been supplying a candle maker who has asked for those colours. His whole range is in black and white or a combination of both. I suppose they look classy!

A visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

 We are so lucky to have this enormous sculpture park within an hour's drive. It is just off the M1 at Wakefield.

At the moment they have exhbitions on by Joanna Vasconcelos and Damian Hirst, but the grounds of Bretton Hall are full of other artist's works such as Anthony Caro, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth to name but a few.

A ring made by the artist Joanna Vasconcelos. It is made from wheel rims and whisky glasses.

I like this one by Damian Hirst.  It is actually made from bronze and then painted.

This is Gerry next to the "Grandad" of the Family of Man by Barbara Hepworth.

Sharp, square and solid shapes indicate that it is a man, and the complexity of the shapes of an older adult contrast to the simpler "younger" persons!

Top tip! (for making large slab pots)

This is something I do a lot when making things in the pottery, and Gerry said today I should share this idea! 

When I am making a large slab pot I use a former to help support the sides.

I get a sturdy cardboard box and cover it with cling film. The box  becomes a template for sizing. Then I roll out the clay for the sides and bottom, allowing enough overlap for joining the seams.

I dry the clay out a little before sticking everything together. But what happens is that the box provides support for the sides and bottom.  

I leave the box in while putting patterns on.

When I have done this, I cut the box open and pull it out from the cling film, leaving the cling film behind. I then remove the cling film. 

I reinforce the seams on the inside at this point, using coils of clay slipped on.

And that's the pot finished....

What - a week off?????

 We've actually packed more into this week than we ever have..... This is because we have had our grandchildren staying with us. In the week we have been to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park - fantastic, but take a good pair of walking shoes, Burnby Hall, Bridlington, Jubilee Park in our village - lots, and York for clothes shopping.

The children have had goes on the wheel, glazed their pots, painted pebbles collected from the beach, baked cakes, played ball games outside and ridden their bikes.

What a week!

A Nation of Litter Louts.....

Whatever happened to the "Keep Britain Tidy" campaign? It's disgraceful the amount of litter that is thrown away out of cars - strewn along the hedgerows. 

 

 In our village we are having a litter pick and because we can't make it tomorrow, we were asked if we could do 300m along a hedge in our village. We took two big rubbish bags - not expecting to fill them. How wrong we were! The bags were filled - mainly with discarded  beer cans, wine bottles and plastic drink bottles and crisp packets. We also picked up a wrecked camping chair, a bag of cement and a smashed up  road sign.

Vandalism in our village!!!

As reported in the magazine "The Week".....

Three's a crowd!

 

 

Three squirrels were in the garden today under the bird feeder. These are meant to be squirrel proof, but the squirrels wait until the birds have knocked the seeds out and then collect them from the ground.

Today I put some stale hot cross buns out and the garden was full of rooks - but they didn't even scare away the squirrels!

Any tips?

Not reducing in the gas kiln

 We fire our big gas kiln to 1280 and in the last part of the firing we normally do a period of reduction, before finishing off with an oxidising atmosphere. During the last few firings we had a lot of pots spoilt because of the over reduction - the oatmeal/blue glaze had come out almost brown and all the aqua pots had turned red when not needed. Also, we had a large sculpture to fire that someone had given us and didn't want to put it under too much stress, so we decided in the last firing NOT to have any reduction and have got some lovely pots out!

The oatmeal/blue colour has turned out great - blues, lilacs and pale green patches.

It is something we will do more often.

Happy Easter.

 This is a wall plaque that a student has asked us to fire for her. It's quite large -50cm across and is made of crank clay.

It has just come out of the kiln today. It is always scary firing something for someone else. You worry if the clay will withstand our high temperatures - will it crack? It didn't.

She has made a superb job of it so I am sharing it with you now.

 

HAPPY EASTER.

Easter Customs

 When we were youngsters my parents would take us up to Kelso in the Scottish borders to visit my great grandmother and participate in the "pace egg" rolling which took place there every Easter Monday.

We would prepare our pace eggs in advance. These were eggs that we put leaves around and wrapped  in old stockings (tights hadn't been invented)  and boiled them in onion skins to dye them. The liquid went through the stockings but couldn'r go through the leaves, so you were left with a pattern on the outside.

This is my modern day take - not so good because it is difficult to get white eggs now, and I used red food dye. 

There is some debate about where the name pace egg originates. Some say it’s from the Old English Pasch meaning Passover, others that it’s from the French word for Easter, Pâques. Or it could be derived from Latin – some claim it’s from Pacha, which means Easter.    

                                                                                      
Then we would take a picnic with lots of other people and go to the old site of Roxburgh castle, just outside Kelso,  next to the River Tweed. Then we would roll our eggs down the steep bank and hope they wouldn't fall into the river below, or crack open.

Apparantly, this tradition goes back hundreds of years and was popular in the Northern Counties of England and the borders of Scotland. Sometimes "pace" plays were performed in the towns where the hero was killed in a mock battle, but brought back to life. Is this a familiar theme at Easter?