Bristol Museum

Popped down the road from the RWA to Bristol Museum. Had a false memory of how much Long Line was exhibited there - only found this one cruet set, nestling amongst a few pieces of Kitchenware. Shocking!

M and I liked this Dorland ware...

Found this Delft pattern on the left, designed by Honor Elliot.

I really like this Clarice Cliff teaset. Very delicate.

Jug of the Month - July

Jug of the Month (Emmerdale theme tune). I know it's all been a bit Bristol recently. Here's another one. This is a Bristol water jug in a bluey grey. Nigel "Long Line" Collins was jealous when he saw it. It has a lovely lid...

 

Here she is next to her Long Line big sister, showing off her lovely lid (big sister doesn't have one).

The Fishponds factory produced durable hotel wares under the trade name Vitrite. During the 1950s hotel ware accounted for about two thirds of the factory's production.

 

 

Found this factory floor plan from the 1950s on the website

http://www.kalendar.demon.co.uk/

Honor Elliot

Such an exciting and unexpected thing happened at New Designers. I was exhibiting scans of a Meakin jug and two Long Line Bristol jugs from the Pountney’s factory...

The 1960s Long Line design came late in the history in the factory and was created by Honor Elliot, a 23 year old college graduate from Stoke-on-Trent. I met Honor Elliot at New Designers. While I was away from the stand she came across my photos and said “I made those.” She had a chat and then had to go. L ran to find me and I did some very rare things – abandoning cake, running and posing in a photo. She was very lovely and incredibly unfussed about the whole thing.

The excitement continued the next day when Honor Elliot’s daughter came to see the work. Her mum had phoned her and told her to come and see it. We’ve all swapped emails and I’m going to send some photos and my dissertation.
She was the youngest member of the design team when she came to Bristol in 1959. She used a pre-existing shape; the "BRISTOL KITCHENWARE" range. The Long Line range was featured in the Woman’s Journal ‘House of the Year 1962’ at Coombe Dingle, Bristol, and won a recommendation from the Good Housekeeping Institute, which is printed on the bottom of each piece.

Jug of the Month - June

Jo's Jugs! These slipcast water jugs in black and white feature a scanned image of a factory produced jug form the 1960s. I like the pattern made by the handle of the jug and handle in the image here....

And the way the spout on the jug mirrors the spout in the transfer image here...

Here's an early model with a black transfer on a white jug. I didn't like the sharp edge of the transfer...

These are better with a black transfer on a black jug, but I'm still not happy with the difference in the two blacks and want the edges of the transfer to disappear...

These are the original scans of the Bristol Long Line jug...

And how the work looked at my degree show...

Scan

Hologram

Scanning

With the aid of a posh scanner and a photographic bin bag I've been taking scans of jugs. This one is a bit streaky but you get the idea.

Transfer firing

A few of these in the kiln. Had to mask off a section and glaze a white patch and fire. Then mask off the white and glaze the rest of the jug black and fire. (Then reglaze and refire some of the black because it was  patchy and rubbish.) Now the transfers are on over the white patch and they're in the kiln for their final firing. Everything crossed...

Jugs on Jugs

Distorted long line jug transfers applied to a long line water jug body. It's badly done Robert Dawson really. The edge of the transfer is too distracting. I need to apply the transfer to a black jug, with a section glazed white. Then match the white part of the transfer to the white glaze. What I really want to do is have a bit of a lie down while someone else does that for me.

These are just glaze and transfer test pieces....

Spray booth

Mould making

Thanks to R for taking these pictures of my mould making a few weeks ago. Can't believe I've cast, fired and glazed since then. Really felt that it would never happen...

All my eggs

Loaded 24 semi-porcelain cast jugs in the kiln that just destroyed all of my glaze work. I'm teaching tomorrow so won't be there to empty the kiln. So won't know if I've had another disaster till Tuesday. Time management is tricky at the moment. The workshops at uni are locked so early I can never get to the kiln room in time to unpack a kiln after a day at school. Ho hum. Playing with the pictures on my iphone here....