Studio Journal: January 26
“The days are short, / The sun a spark
Hung thin between / The dark and dark.
Fat snowy footsteps / Track the floor,
And parkas pile up / Near the door.
The river is / A frozen place
Held still beneath / The trees' black lace.
The sky is low. / The wind is gray.
The radiator / Purrs all day.”
― John Updike, A Child's Calendar
Adding brushwork to our new flared bowls. This is before firing. This piece is for a commission but we will have these for sale in January.
Whilst the radiator ‘purrs’ all day in Updike’s poem about January, in our studio it is all about the kilns. They have been ‘clicking’ and ‘groaning’ away all month long, the electricity meter clocking up the kilowatts at pace. Our lofty workspace is tricky to heat in a cosy way and so our two top loaders have become the focal point. They have gained the office photocopier status as a place beside which to have discussions, sip coffee near, for our dog Nella to sleep beneath (!). Also a perfect place to dry soggy running trainers and endless amounts of reclaim and saturated plaster bats. Perhaps our productivity has been so high this month because taking a break from throwing and trimming means a break from warmth.
And it has been such a productive and successful month for us. Matt and I seem to have harnessed our energy to work away quietly, solidly, on a number of making tasks (an exciting commission for a new hotel in the Scottish Highlands and a beautifully creative commission from a Swedish Interior Design client). Lots of teaching too which has been lovely. And the usual number crunching and analytical tasks that we find ourselves facing in January, ambitiously trying to shape the fiscal parts of of our business like clay at the wheel (takes time, patience, skill and much courage).
I have been working in a quiet way on some new glazes. By quietly, I mean in a way that doesn’t dominate my time too much, and whereby the results don’t matter so much. So often I am responding to deadlines and everything is rushing and slightly stressful, but at the moment I am simply experimenting and tweaking and responding to tests in each firing. Here are some of the tests I’ve been running and some corresponding photographs:
(pictured above) a flatter brown tone of our ochre glaze. Our client wanted a glaze that looked earthy and clay like. For this I reduced the amount of rutile in the glaze and added a lot of water to the glaze batch.
I’ve been testing a matte base glaze with some of our standard ware colourants (white and ochre so far) plus some ochre and wood ash / ochre blends.
I tried to make a matte pink but it was this buttery yellow which I quite like.
I am working my way through washing and sieving all the wood ash I saved from our stove at home last year, as we will be doing a gas firing in spring and I have some wood ash glazes I am wanting to use.
3. I attempted a matte tin rutile pink but I got this lovely buttery yellow instead.
2. Testing a matte base glaze with ochre / tin / rutile and wood ash
We are also about 50% of the way through all the paperwork for enabling us to sell to the EU again. It is not actually a huge task, but when you have no free time, writing risk assessments about all the ways someone could be hurt by a mug seems to drop to the bottom of the to do list.
Spring feels viable now, the snowdrops are out and we are getting ready for our late winter / early spring fairs, Manchester Ceramics Fair and the Hepworth Ceramics Fair, both in March. Plus an update of some new pieces in February. It is busy and promising.
Things we’ve enjoyed listening to: Moby Dick on audiobook. I have never read it and it is keeping my company in those long glazing sessions.
Things we’ve enjoyed cooking (and eating): Chilli paneer from EAST, Anna Jones salted caramel crack brownies and our 2025 batch of sloe gin…….
Curved Mug in Nori (just a few back in stock)
Enclosed Bowl in Ochre, Flecked Stoneware