Tag: Pottery

Old pottery

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Old buildings in our city don’t always last. They are often left to rot. Trees and bushes grow out of brickwork, splitting the seams and unzipping the building. Making the ancient pottery a ruin.

Some places dismantle buildings. For example the Black Country Museum in Dudley, West Midlands, England. It often numbers each individual brick of a house, or factory, or school and rebuilds it within the grounds of the museum. It has working chain makers and underground canals that run through caves with fossils imbeded in the walls.

Meanwhile our industrial heritage in Stoke on Trent is gradually rotting, or is even burnt down by arsonists. We really should take better care of out industrial archeology even if it means donating it to the black country museum.

Pottery closure

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There was a pottery in Burslem where they let you paint your own designs.

Unfortunately like many other ceramic factories it has closed. The cost of gas and electricity means that a once thriving local industry is dwindling. Stafford pottery was one of the latest victims.

There are still excellent potteries that create designs and pieces of art for the 21st Century. Portmeirion, Emma Bridgewater, Wedgwood are a few that continues to produce beautiful work. It’s hard to say whether they will still be producing ceramics in a few years time. We also have a company called Lucideon which undertakes research and development of ceramics for such things as electrical insulators, non slip tiles and other diverse uses.

Hopefully this city of potters will continue to survive well into the future.

Scone time

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Sultana scones with cream on a Calico Burleigh Ware plate for tea.

It was very tasty and filling. I decided not to have jam on them, it would have been to sweet. But I did butter them.

Burleigh Ware is a type of pottery made at Middleport pottery in Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent. Calico is one of many pattern types made by transferring the pattern onto the pottery with transfer prints. It’s a skilled job to line up all the prints. They are mounted on paper and stick to the pottery when they are wetted, the print sort of slides off onto the piece. If you turn over pottery it will usually have the makers name and other details printed on the base. People who do this say they are in the ‘turnover club’ .

Eight years ago

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Fond memory of a cat doodle I did eight years ago. This was on my Facebook memories today. There are other drawings but I won’t put them on here. I might use them later but I think this is the cutest one. The little bottle oven and tea set are the connection with where I live, the Potteries, Stoke-on-Trent.

I have lots of sketchbooks around the house with doodles in. I should find them all and look through them. What will happen to them when I’ve gone I wonder?

Finished planting pocket

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This is the planting pocket I made at BArts pottery project a few weeks ago. It was made with rolled out terracotta clay and coloured with bright slip. I used plants to impress patterns into it’s surface. It looked OK, but the colours intensified during firing. I think they are almost too bright. I hope when it has soil and a plant in it, it will  look nicer. X

Pottery fun

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Hope this will be a feature for my garden. Just made today, a planting pocket at a BCB workshop in stoke. Really enjoyed it. Now waiting for firing. The blue and orange are slip colours, there’s a little cat scratched into the left bottom corner. The black and white patch is newspaper holding the planting pocket open until the clay is hardened. I used leaves impressed in the surface for the design but the wet slip obliterated a lot of the details so then I scratched them back into the surface.

Finally in progress

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I started this at art group last November and I hadn’t touched it till today’s art group. That’s about 2 months. I feel guilty that it’s taking so long but with illness and one thing and another it’s taken me this long to get going again. It’s a work in progress and I want to try and get a better feeling of three dimensions to the teapot.

I working the pattern out as I go along and I need to take into account the lighting aswell. It’s been four hours and I didn’t want to stop, but the session only lasts till 2.30pm

Middleport pottery

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What is your favorite place to go in your city?

A working pottery at Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent, England. It also includes a museum, with lots of industrial archeology. They sell various tableware in the pottery shop, there is a large selection of patterns for sale. There is a good cafe that overlooks the Trent and Mersey canal. There are small studios for artists and potteries, and a row of shops opposite the entrance to the pottery with small galleries and crafts for sale.

There is also a handsome bottle oven facing the canal that was covered in bright red ceramic poppies to commemorate Rememberence day a few years ago. You only have to pay to go round the museum section. Tucked towards the far end of the site is a working steam engine which runs at various times. I’m not sure exactly when? Worth taking the time to visit if you can find it (it’s tucked down some narrow side streets.

It also hold pottery classes and was also used for the great pottery throw down a few years ago to before it moved to the Gladstone pottery in Longton.