Down in the Studio

I've been down in the studio working towards Christmas shows. It's hard to keep focused on the integrity of the drawing on the pots at this time of year.




When I look at the orders and see large numbers of one design I'm tempted to do a production line, but over the years I've found this approach just doesn't work for me. Every time I sit down at the wheel to throw or the desk to decorate I try to focus my mind on what I want the pot to communicate to the user- the curve of the belly and the foot standing perkily "like a woman in high heels" as an older wiser potter once said to me. Every pot is decorated with a drawing which is pretty much completed from start to finish as one drawing rather than brocken up into stages such as "all the orange bits now, all the green slashes now." When I'm drawing I try to keep in my mind the essence of what I'm conveying in marks- the grassiness of grass, how it grows, why thicker, big twigs look different, less flexible than the thin springy twigs used in the inside of the nest. Instead of thinking of these pieces as 20 paddock pots or 15 nest bowls I think of them as 20 drawings of paddocks and 15 separate drawings of nests.