News

Here are a few pictures of my new kiln in construction. I found a bit of time to do more work on this over Christmas and the brickwork is now nearly complete. It has been a time consuming process as each brick has to be shaped individually to fit the rather complex shape. A few more days work and then the whole thing will need to be covered with a thick insulating clay mixture, the chimney completed and the wooden former burnt out. I hope to have a first firing sometime in early Spring.

I keep forgetting to bring my camera to my new kiln site but I have just got my hands on these photos that Catherine -rising young protégée who is going to be sharing the new kiln with me- took last summer. These are a few pictures of the kiln shed taking shape. More pictures of the kiln itself will follow in due course.

The latest issue of Resurgence magazine is a ‘Craft Special’. I particularly liked the editorial, reproduced here:

Artists and artisans are alchemists. They transform base material into objects of beauty, utility and delight. Whether the alchemists of old turning base metal into gold is a literal truth or a metaphor is still debated, but there is no doubt whatsoever about the transformative power of artists and artisans.

For millennia, potters have taken a lump of ordinary clay and revealed its extraordinary ability to be a pot of pure visual pleasure as well as a vessel to fulfil everyday functions of holding water and wine, food and flowers. Continue reading “The Power of Arts and Crafts”