New paintings and regular art updates.
Another from my photos of the BCB, British ceramic biennial that was held in Stoke on Trent a few weeks ago.
Some pieces were more beautiful than others, some seemed to have more significance. Some like this seem playful. A piece that has been twiddled and twisted, creating a root like structure but with almost a trumpet bell on the end of it.
Simply placed on a surface in front if a window, the object casts interesting shadows.
I don’t know what I think of it, but it was worth documenting.
At Miso Japanese Restaurant in London Road, Stoke-on-Trent. Lovely food. I’m so happy that I was able to take my relative out there for a birthday supper.
Sushi and then Bento boxes with Plum wine to drink. It was an extravagant evening, but a real pleasure..
Miso is mentioned in Richard Osman’s book “The bullet that missed”, it’s a crime novel. Part of The Thursday Murder Club series. The owner of the restaurant didn’t know that Osman had written about it!
I took a lot of photos at the British Ceramic biennial, the ceramics were remarkable. This object is made up of several pieces. Coloured in what I would call ice cream colours, pastels that I would associate with the seaside. The rope makes me think of bouys or the floats on lobster pots. I didn’t get a catalogue so I’m afraid I don’t have the details of the artist involved.
Gorgeous window at All Saints church on Leek Road Stoke-on-Trent. The colours really are bright and spectacular. This is at the rear of the church (but on the left hand side looking from the road). It’s such a busy road, it’s surprising how clean it looks. Whether it was washed for the ceramics festival, I don’t know.
This weekend at Etruria Industrial museum, steaming the Princess engine. Pleased they’ve used my painting of it to publicise the event. (28 and 29 Oct 2023). I think the opening times are on their Facebook page.
The industrial museum includes Jessie Shirley’s bone and flint mill. The Princess engine is a beam engine that ran the belts to grind the flint in large floor pans in the adjoining building. It’s steam powered and runs by using a beam to rock up and down like a seesaw. This uses steam to push a valve down and then the vacuum created pulls it up again. I’m not an engineer, but you could come and see it running.
Etruria Industrial museum
Kilndown Close
Etruria, Stoke on Trent
Staffordshire.
(on the Trent and Mersey canal).
I was at the potbank cafe, which was part of the potbank hotel in the grounds of Spode factory site, part of the industrial heritage (and revolution) of Stoke on Trent.
The cafe was taken over by a cafe group called “the quarter”, but the hotel is still there and is based within the industrial architecture on the site.
I think I drew the flower in a jam jar while waiting for a friend? I noticed the deration of the flower stem in the water, an example of how the density of matter changes the way light travels through it. When I was young I hated trying to calculate the angle of defraction. Perhaps I should have drawn it and measured my drawing?
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
I’ve said before I’m not religious, I don’t go to Church or Chapel anymore, but when I was younger I did. The methodist way of prayer and praise was simple. Not much adornments, no artistic decoration, just plain white walls and brown wooden pews and pulpit.
That heritage is in abundance where I live now. Just not of here is a village called Mow Cop where primitive Methodists used to preach outside to their flocks of parishoners. I believe that John Wesley preached there.
Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_Methodist_Church_(Great_Britain)
Gives more information than I am aware of.
Bethesda Methodist Chapel, in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, is gradually being restored to it’s previous magnificent state, after being left to rack and ruin over several decades. I have had the pleasure of performing there with a choir on a couple of occasions and have seen the improvement over the years. It is rather large for a Methodist Chapel and could almost be classified as a cathedral.
Other cultural heritage I am aware of is the formation of the first co-operative movement in the world. It was started in Toad Lane in Rochdale, England. Wikipedia probably has information about that too.
Every so often I paint one of the iconic bottle ovens from Stoke-on-Trent. These were where pottery was originally fired with coal fires. The city would be covered by a pall of thick smoke, morning noon and night.
They sometimes had metal bands wrapped round them to strengthen them, and the old bricks can shine like gold when there is a lovely sunrise or set. Arthur Berry, famous artist of Stoke-on-Trent used to speak about the beauty of the potteries towns. He painted and drew abstracted views of the six towns. He’s known as the potteries Lowry.
This painting is of a derelict oven, I’ve painted clematis growing up it, rewinding the ancient landscape. The blue area represents the local canals, it’s shape mirrors the bottle oven. The flowers in it represent the abstract canal roses that are found adorning canal barges throughout Britain.
A picture I created five years ago. Collaged from an angled view of part of the old spode factory in Stoke on Trent. I love it because it looks like it’s floating in a beautiful blue sky, with patterns of wispy clouds creating a tracery of waves like the tide coming in around the buildings. I should do more….
Happy bottle oven day! 29.8.23. It’s celebrated every year. I think there are only 47 bottle ovens left from the thousands that used to be in Stoke on Trent. A lot of them are deteriorating but hopefully the heritage of them will be preserved. The potteries, with their bottle ovens were the creative heart of the city.
Mallaband-Brown