Jug of The Month - March

A Pountney Bristol Kitchenware jug from the 1950s. Lovely big round green belly.

It looks good with some other green jugs...

Great advertising campaign for the range here...

Some storage jars in the same range featured on the recent BBC Hattie Jacques drama...

It's from collector Nigel Collins who lives ten minutes from me in a bungalow full of ceramics. The following pics are just his Bristol Kitchenware pieces. There are also rooms full of Long Line, drawers and dressers full of Midwinter and Ridgeway, plus a bathroom full of Midwinter casserole dishes and gravy boats. I spent three hours there recently, taking photographs and asking questions - thankyou Nigel!

This work is in the museum at The House of Marbles in Bovey Tracey. Familiar colour scheme...

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...

Helen Moore

Excellent talk and tutorial from Helen Moore, who is currently doing her MA at the RCA. These pieces are from her triaxial glaze tests. She showed us how she does this testing and it took a while but I was with her in the end. I even drew charts. My tutorial was very helpful. I need some mirrors....

The blue one reminded me of something....the mushrooms who spied for Fenella in Chorlton and the Wheelies. Just me? Perhaps I'm overtired...

Jugs

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....

Tiny

These tiny jugs came out of a test kiln. Perhaps that is the way forward. A few pieces at a time in test kilns. That might mean less skippage. Skipping. Skippaging. Things in the skip.

Straight to skip

Glaze kiln overfired and all went straight to the skip. I lost lots of porcelain jugs and all of my work from two days of throwing with Simon Hulbert. All my drawings of cones in the kiln record books look like slugs.

Pyrometric cone

Slug

Casting

Today I taught from 8.30am - 3.30pm, and then went to uni from 4.30pm to 9.30pm. Doing things I enjoy though so no complaints. Ten ish more weeks and the making will be over. And I like the plaster room best at night when there are fewer witnesses...

I'm casting my jug. So far...a split one, a dented one, a squashed one and a survivor. The survivor is a bit dribbly but I'm counting it. More survivors needed tomorrow.

Bath Spa Ceramics Blog

L has made a Bath Spa Ceramics blog for our year group. It's here.... http://www.bathspaceramics.wordpress.com/ and it has a university lion on it.

Wordpress made my head hurt a bit but I managed to make a slideshow and type one sentence.

Still not getting it

My jug mould is finally finished. I certainly managed to drag that out. When I asked technician T to explain the outside fitting spare just once more with feeling, he asked incredulously "Are you still not getting this?" or "Is it still not clear?" or something similar. It doesn't help that the technicians come up with mysterious methods that aren't in any of my books. Above is an example - three wooden sides, a brick, a clay wall and clay flying buttresses. They make it up on the spot to confuse me.

No more nails

Have spent a horrid amount of time picking off bits of sticky fixers from the bottom of jugs. And from the glass shelves I stuck the jugs on. Whose idea was that? Mine? Oh.

Mid-Term Review

Here are some pics from my mid-term review with Stephen Dixon. Jugs and bright glazes. Shadowy photographs. Had more work in the glass cabinet downstairs too. Enjoyed talking to Stephen Dixon. Think it all went OK...