The British Isles. Inspiring Tiles

I have been meaning to take pics of these lovely terracotta tiles, they are embedded into the concrete on our village sign. Each one represents each member country of the British Isles.
Stunning how they have weathered, I just like the simplicity of each one represented.

The Shamrock for Ireland

The Leek for Wales

The Thistle for Scotland

and the Rose for England.

A new approach. Photographing ceramics, staging products and white backgrounds??

Photographing work D.I.Y. style has its upsides (its not costing, I'm learning all the time and its instant, so I can work on the photos straight away, tweak and upload to wherever I want them to go.)
The flip side is its time consuming, sometimes taking as long as it does to make something from scratch,  and the photos are not always to the quality I would like and lets face it, a professional photographer would know how to shoot better than me, see my work with fresh eyes and know how to get the best from it.

I have to say I have succumbed to the white background, no creases, taken in a bright room and my pics have become more and more staged as I go along. (Mainly due to Noths appetite for staged photographs to get products initially accepted onto their website) I go along with this to a larger extent as it puts the product into perspective having a few tailored additions in the photo, creates interest ect... But.... sometimes it can go too far and on occasions I have seen photographs and not quite known what is for sale until reading the listing, there has been so much "busy" stuff and paraphernalia distracting in the photograph).
I used to just take photos of my work and that was that, I felt that the work should just speak for itself, I think I would like to go back to that sometime.

Anyway more to the point! I have taken some (staged) shots here of some new work, I am trying to get away from the stark white backgrounds for a while and set my work in a more natural environment, (where it should be)
I have tried to keep the colours authentic to the "blue" light we have in England, we don't live in the Med so our light is not yellow or orange, on the whole it is grey!

As my work is on  the whole quite Rustic in its appearance and use of colours I have teamed up with some
rustic surfaces, like this wood back ground which is a piece of weathered wood that is attached to the top of an old meat cooler.

I have also used some linen cloths and vintage wooden pegs to add some extra texture into the photograph.

In these photos I have used the weathered wood as the background and used some twisted hazel in the background which I have been introducing into my photographs of ceramic planters for some time now. I just like the curly shape and colour and have been using it to break up the white backgrounds I have been using.

This is one of my fired round stoneware pots, planted up with some parsley, perfect for the kitchen window.

More shots against a linen background. (creases & all)
Mmm think I may consider banishing the white backdrops for something a little more homely.
For the time being anyway!

I think this is about the longest blog post I have done to date!!
xx

Work station, clay pots and soap dishes. Greenware

My clay working time is now limited to 2 afternoons a week (and anything I can fit in over the weekend)
 My extra day in school has meant that I have to be more efficient with my time now and will probably mean a decline in how much work I can produce for my shops, so I have set all my larger items as "made to order" which I get on with over the course of the week and try to make a few new little things while I have the clay out on the bench.

I have had orders for my bird feeders and whilst waiting for them to dry a bit and work on again I have made these porky little planters.

These ones have an oval opening at the top with an overall oval shape to them and
the ones below are rounded with a rounded opening.

I love making these, they are perfect hand sized and it is good to be free with the clay and stamp
it with hessian, and my other tools. The grit you see on the sides is called "grog" which is ground
fired ceramic grit which will fire into the clay giving it a course texture. I like it.

I made this one last year. It has multiple layers of glaze and
oxide and has had a few firings.

Soap dishes ready for bisque firing.

These ones came from the last long Glaze firing.

Broken Week

Last week was the Mother of all weeks!

So glad its over and a new week has begun. My week began with a car accident on the way home from  picking up my boys from school run. I was hit and shaken about, glass everywhere, the boys and I walked away with not a scratch though. 

So thats all I take away from this experience, the thought of what could have happened to us and just leave it at that.

The car however is wrecked!

My second part of this rubbish week is this irritation!

  I hate this! This is greenware, at the point of
loading into the kiln, one of my textured planters just cracked straight down its joining seem.I think it was just too cold to be putting things into the kiln, everything seemed so much more fragile.After a few more chips and snaps on this particular occasion I retreated to safer pursuits and a few choice words. 

So I waited for a warmer day, got the job done, loaded up the "Big Boy" with loads of
 wall pockets and bird feeders all safe and sound away from my cursed hands!  Fired the same night and next day. Its all gone ok too, nothing broken. 

I will post some pics next timexx

Art Tech Display

This is my latest board in the school. A mood board.
It hangs outside the Art rooms, which was previously bare.

 I have incorporated a Year 11 G.C.S.E students  Art work into my board and also included some scanned pages from the inspirational book by Sibella Court "etc.".

Images and texts are printed onto vellum paper, wallpapers and any scraps of interesting 

papers I could find laying around in the Art rooms.

Some of my favourite pages from "ect."