Tag: Staffordshire

Middleport visit

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After visiting the Arts and Minds gallery in Harper Street Middleport today @arts_and_minds_vsn, we popped over the road to Middleport pottery to get a replacement burleighware tea plate to replace the one I broke. While we were in there I saw this stags head decorated with flowers on the wall. This is the kind of trophy I approve of… Ceramic! I took a photo because it was interesting…. I like the fact it is on an old wall with cracked and flaking paint. The place is an authentic piece of industrial history.

Etruria Industrial museum.

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Etruria Inustrial museum today, the museum is open on Fridays now and their first big event is in June. We visited today to drop off some paintings at the cafe there and to have a look round the Princess beam engine that was designed by James Watt I think. It’s a combination of steam and vacuum that was used to power a belt that is attached to flint grinding pans. This was where flint and bone was ground to a wet slurry that was dried to powder to be added to clay to make fine bone China. The mill is next to a canal to draw water in for the steam engine, which was also discharged back into the canal and to transport it’s ground flint and bone along to potteries in Stoke on Trent and beyond.

The original mill was called Jessie Shirley’s bone and flint mill and the painted name of it still partly remains on the building.

Photos are of the engine and boiler house including the governor on the beam engine which is used to regulate the amount of steam produced and the speed the Princess engine rotates.

Sawadee Thai taste

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What is your favorite restaurant?

This is an friendly restaurant. The food is tasty and plentiful. I still find it exotic even after going there for a few years. The owner/chef is very gregarious and cheerful.

Examples of the food we enjoy include papya and seafood salad, different types of red green and yellow curries, sticky rice, and obviously speciality Thai meals that I like but at this time of night I can’t remember the names!

When we go there we eat the food and then I wonder why I haven’t taken a photo! I’m not really of the generation that does that. OK I take photos of food I make but that’s because it’s either a recipe or I’m surprised I managed to make it.

Sawadee Thai taste is a small restaurant. It can accommodate around twenty people and will help organise parties. It’s in Stoke in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire. The atmosphere is friendly and informal. It is not expensive.

People sketching

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When I was out sketching a few weeks ago there were lots of other people drawing. After I finished I took this photo of my friend drawing the same view I’d done. He was working in charcoal and pencil I remember. The day was overcast with patches of blue sky. The ground is covered in concrete, but the way it is breaking up I think there are probably cobblestones underneath. There is a large area of cobbles around the corner where you enter the Middleport pottery complex. In the backdround you can see a small wooden crane which was used to load and unload barges. Forty years ago my hubby worked at another pottery, he actually used one of these to lift packed pottery ware to load onto a lorry. He said you could lift a big weight easily because of the gearing on it. The one he used was cast iron. It had a band brake and a pawl and ratchet to hold the load in place as it was swung over the lorry.

We are not that far away from the past, history is not that long ago. A lot of the old industry in the area was using old machines and equipment, because they had always done things that way and it probably saved a lot in investment. Even now there are lots of pottery molds to be found in the area. Sadly a lot of them get smashed. Losing our heritage. Do we really want to wipe our history out completely?

Need to take better photos…

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Three pottery paintings I did a few years ago. The one of the jug is going to a new home soon. ❤️

I took them to a joint performance of our Clay chorus and the Starfish choir because we were singing a song about the Willow pattern (this is based on a Spode platter) and also a ship called Hispaniola bringing pottery clay from across the seas that had been written for us by Mark Whitter. I was very proud to have my work appreciated.

I am making cards from these if I can so I need better photos to show them clearly .

Snow coming…

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Beautiful photo by Aaron Burden from unsplash. I don’t normally use other people’s pictures but this is free to use on the Internet.

We have had snow warnings, for Thursday night and for Friday. We have had a lot of snow across the country over the last couple of days, but in the South and the North of the UK. But a low pressure zone is travelling up from the South, and an Arctic blast of cold air is coming from the North. The wet air from the south is due to turn into snow somewhere over the Midlands and Northern England (Staffordshire and Derbyshire). Lower levels are due to be 10 to 20 centimetres, but higher ground might get 40 centimeters. Not sure how much that is in inches but it sounds a lot? I think 12 centimeters is 4.7 inches? So today we got the shopping done. Made sense rather than getting caught out tomorrow or Friday.

Rode Hall snowdrop walk

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Rode Hall snowdrop walk is lovely at this time of year. The snowdrops are in full bloom and other spring plants like Heli ores, Cyclamen and Daffodils are also in flower or coming into flower.

Rode Hall is off the A34 in Staffordshire, near Rode Heath village. They charge £6 per adult to walk round the grounds on the snowdrop walk. There is a lake and a wooded area. The hall sits in beautiful grounds with a walled kitchen garden next to it. They have a monthly market which is next due on the 4th of March 2023.

Rita sketching

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Ten minute pen sketch, my fellow urban sketcher Rita was concentrating on drawing Keele Chapel, she looked chilly in the cold wind!

There was an open day at the University today but they let the urban Sketchers on the carpark. I sat myself down on a bench by the students union and ruffled by the wind that was gusting through the plaza, I sat and drew the Chapel too while watching gazebos rocked by the wind. A whole display of soaps and moisturisers on one craft stall went flying to the ground, it got gloomier and colder. But then about twenty of us gathered to see each others work! What a brisk and breezy morning.

Urban sketching

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I’ve been out with Stoke urban Sketchers today. It was a breezy cold morning but I need to get back into urban sketching again, I haven’t been along for months. We were at Keele University in Staffordshire. I decided to draw the Chapel, large, brutal architecture, a bit like a castle without the castelations. If that’s what they are called. I tried drawing using a charcoal set I’d bought. It was a bit disappointing, less charcoal, more grey pencil? I used some conte crayon sticks and a few felt pens to add bits of colour. I finished off drawing tiny lines to indicate the walls were made of black bricks. Eventually I went and got a hot drink. Then I came out again and quickly drew one of the other Sketchers. Finally we had a throw down of everyone’s drawings, I might post a photo later.

Panto time

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Penkhull Pantomime this year is Robin Hood. It will be on in Stoke on Trent again next week, the Penkhull group is performing at our local village hall. I was not able to take part in it this year because of my ill health, but I am pleased that they will be using some small paintings of scenes I originally did three years ago. I’m trying to source some fibreboard so I can do a final painting, it will be based on a celtic design that I found and as it’s about Scotland there will be thistles and a stags head. I haven’t painted it yet but no doubt I will post about it when I’ve completed it. The photo here is me waring a mob cap in a performance I was in back in December.