Sunday 21 July 2013

A week in the sun.

I've been here at the Leach pottery in St. Ives a week now and I think that all those things that Phil has been telling me are starting to settle in. Theres almost an attitude about being a potter. A lot of the people here have this very relaxed attitude about pots. 




This is not a beautiful bowl, but Bill Marshall made it in the 60's. You can tell that it wasn't in a good spot in the kiln, its kinda rough and not well decorated.  I picked it up and didn't question its function. I felt the wall thickness and its perfect. Its substantial but light, and when you look at it it almost looks like its floating. I love it. 


I love St. Ives



We fired the soda kiln, more than 300 pots in the soda kiln. This is the standard ware for the pottery. The pottery is in a transition into a new range, before the pots were beautiful but didn't function very well and took too long to make. The idea now is to design a standard ware range that can be made in larger quantities that function better.  


Friday 12 July 2013

One thing after another

      Phil organized for me to go to the Leach pottery for 12 days. in exchange for a room I'll be working in the studio...because I'm so hard done by... I get on the train at 10am and arrive at 8pm. So it will be a very long day, so perhaps I should bring some reading material. The day I got on the plane to come here Mum and I went to a used book store we found this, I've read it a number of times since I've been here, I'm having trouble understanding some of the things that Bernard is talking about. But the more time I spend with Phil and the more I learn about making work and making a living and integrity, the more this book makes sense to me. Some things can't be learnt in school, being here is teaching me more important lessons in being a potter than I ever could have learnt if I hadn't of come here. 

Phil has yet again given me so much, one day I hope I can repay everything that he's done for me. 

I can't express enough how much this means to me. 

Thank you. 


A few cups, 


I made this bottle form out of an iron loaded clay. It firers to about cone 8, with the white slip on it the decoration will appear layered. usually we look for glazes to bond together, but with this technique, the clay, slip and glaze all appear as separate entities. 

I was not happy with this decoration, I feel like it doesn't work with this pot, so I scratched it off. I think the mark is much better than what it does for the form. 

I've been looking a lot at slipware pottery from about the 1700's and this wavy decoration is derived from what is know as "the river". I practised this motion hundreds of times before I applied it to the pot. the idea of slipware is that today you decorate 100pots and tomorrow you decorate 100 more of the same pots, by the time you've finished. The marks become spontaneous. 







Thursday 4 July 2013

Been a while

This morning I woke up and thought to myself...why haven't you been updating your blog Jordan? Now that my camera has arrived from Canada (It had to be shipped because I'd forgotten it at home), I'll be taking a lot more photographs and updating it more frequently.



Paddy the new puppy, He's always keeping us busy. 


I've been making some cups, with all the English Slipware in the house, I thought I should put some decoration on some cups.


Chawans, I've been making quite a few pots using coils in the last couple of weeks. Theres a lot of discussion about making honest pots. I've been finding myself curious about making pots using different techniques.