February
It's March, let's talk February
February went by faster than I can say February, which admittedly, at least for this non-native speaker, is the most difficult to pronounce of all the month’s English names... It started very very cold and ended warm-ish with a hint of Spring. Too much of a hint, to be honest — as much as it has been a long and freezing Winter I can’t say that I am ready to face all the garden work that the beginning of Spring entails. For now, I am avoiding this subject altogether…
For such a short month it was a rather busy one, and so this post is entirely dedicated to the goings-on in the studio during February.
I was hoping to end the month with a bisque firing but that wasn’t possible due to an unavoidable tooth extraction, which, although rather quickly and painlessly executed, left me in recovery mode for about a week. It was like my whole body was mourning the loss of the tooth and there was nothing I could do except lie on the sofa and allow it to run its course. Which I did.
Also, my parents were visiting for my daughter’s birthday (I told you it was a busy month) and together we spent a few days in Wrocław, which is definitely worth a visit and maybe even a Postcard.
I also ran a couple of workshops here, in my studio, which filled the shelves with plenty of goodies to fire.
As for my own work, I focussed on larger pieces with a few breaks to make two elderberry sets (one is already spoken for, and I may still make one more just to finish the dried material I have), two espresso beakers, and one colourful tray.
I wanted to create a few pieces that would share the same very limited colour palette (two colours only!) and have a similar design, something simple but, as always, inspired by Nature. And, in a totally uncharacteristic move, I grabbed some A3 pieces of paper and did some drawings!
I can tell you honestly that my favourite is the middle one! I really like the mixed flowers and the composition, and as a drawing I would be happy to have it in my sketchbook. But as a clay platter… not so much. The orientation for one is a problem. If you have a round platter you want it to be “the right way up” whichever way you turn it. Then, the fact that I wanted to keep the palette limited… different flowers kinda ask for different colours… And, last but not least, I knew that the drawing looked good on paper because it was loose and I wasn’t sure I would be able to transfer that same looseness to clay with sgraffito.
In the end, I went with the one on the right, the leaves, or, as Ben Wakeman commented when I posted them on Notes, the one that looks “almost like excavated fossils of prehistoric flora”, which I think sounds pretty cool and way better than “leaves”.
I started by making the platters, then the vase. By the time I started on the panels the design had evolved and become a lot looser, and in fact a lot more interesting for a flat piece of wall art.
For these, I used only two “homemade” slips: terracotta-red clay in liquid form, and a petrol-blue pigment added to a white clay. Both slips will darken considerably but, since these pieces don’t need to be “food safe”, I can fire them to 1080 ºC to still keep some of the blue hue. Hopefully, they will come out similar to the triptych below.
In between these, I made the smaller pieces, both because I need the variety and because the larger pieces needed to dry at different stages.
The espresso beakers also got a simple decoration which I have used before, based on a traditional flower design found in some pottery from the Portuguese region of Alentejo. For the tray, I decided to improvise and drew directly on the clay, which was a great way of freeing my hand to then sgraffito away mostly ignoring the marks left by the graphite pencil (which will burn off in the firing). The two elderberry sets, complete with tiny plates are drying nicely (as I said above, I will still make a third one this week), and I have one more mug on which I think I will replicate the design you can see on the tiny plate on the right, in the third picture below.
Given that I still want to make one more elderberry set and need to decorate the last mug, the next bisque firing will likely be in a week’s time which, in turn, means all these pieces will, if all goes well, be finished around the third week of March.
Below are the platters and panels, as they look now, decoration finished. I really enjoyed “sgraffiting” (not sure that’s a word) these shapes and will continue to explore them, I’m sure. I want to try using other colour combinations, maybe use underglazes, which are more colour-stable even at higher temperatures, instead of slips. These are now drying on the shelves, patiently waiting for the next step.
I have included below a short clip of the vase as it looks like now. You will notice that I inverted the colours, making the band along the edges blue and the centre red — let’s hope the red is not too overwhelming. As Alford Wayman wrote recently “This all may not work out, but it is always important to try things that may not work.” How else would we learn, right?
March will be a different kind of busy, hopefully I will find it me to open the seed drawer and get to work outside — the soil is now thawed and it’s time to sow broad beans, one of my favourite crops.
I leave you with something really fun I made this month, as part of The Outdoor Sketchbook Collective — a meander book! Thanks again, Orla Stevens, for such a cool idea and project. I’m already looking forward to exploring March’s theme!
As always, thank you so much for reading. Given how short the second month of the year is, I am amazed at how much there was to share today, especially given that I was barely standing up for seven of its short days.
And so, whether you’re preparing for Spring or winding down for Autumn, take good care of yourself, and I will see you next time!
Sara
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Gosto muito dos pratos redondos! O “livro desdobrável” (não sei se devo chamá-lo assim) é espantoso! Uma bela execução de de uma bela ideia.
Looks like it was a very productive month, Sara. No wonder it felt busy! Some beautiful work there. I like the triptych a lot. Hope your March doesn't go by so quickly.