Molly Hatch- Contemporary American Decorative

This is the work of American ceramicist Molly Hatch. Molly's practice combines making domestic ware and creating amazing, beautiful exhibition installations. Molly's work explores the power of the domestic vessel. She says

"A cup or a bowl is almost universally accessible and navigable as most people use them in their daily lives. For me, the blank cup is anonymous in a manner similar to a blank piece of paper. The three-dimensional surface tableware provides is rich with conceptual potential as a place for drawings and paintings. Interaction is encouraged through the decoration of hidden surfaces—the underside of a cup, beneath a lid or on a handle. "
I've voiced many similar sentiments over the years!

As well as being a great artist Molly is a writer and academic and her blog "stripes and dots" is essential reading for followers of contemporary decorative ceramics and aesthetic concerns within the strange world of modern pottery.

reading pottery

We have been over on Stradbroke Island for a week. This beautiful island is mostly National Park and in the middle of winter the wide sandy beaches are nearly empty.



When I was over there I read "Life in Seven Mistakes" by Susan Johnson. Through the disfunctional (but all too common) family holiday Johnson's novel engages with issues of family, death motherhood and art in a way that is simultaneously painful and laugh out loud funny. Several times as I read this novel I found myself laughing at the exaggerated but familiar disasters encountered when the generations get together to try and have a "nice" time. One of the wonderful surprises of this novel is the engagement of art and artists and the strange, niche that we occupy in society. The main character Elizabeth is a successful potter. The insignificance and ectasy of this success within her family and within Australian society is drawn out with humour and wit. Johnson's descriptions of the creative process are beautiful and capture the way I feel about making.

"Why does she do it? Because she has done it for so long she no longer knows what to do? To stop herself from feeling rubbed out? It is certainly not the commercial language of ceramics which speaks to her, but other secret words she longs to hear......a language from somewhere else, which makes her long to speak back. It is true that for Elizabeth the world sometimes seems filled with this unspoken language and that she hopes to find in her work something loosed from ordinary earthly laws which might free her tongue. When she is working on a new piece she gets up every morning hoping that this might be the day when a piece begins to resemble the truth in the whorls in a piece of washed up wood or in the roots of an ancient tree, and which speaks to these things in shared words...."pp 214

As I was reading this novel, particularly the descriptions of Elizabeth making pots, I was thinking of my friend Australian ceramicist Jane Sawyer and the acknowledgments at the end of the book thank Jane for her inspiring bowls. This weird little backwater of the art world still has the power to inspire others....Many thanks to Susan Johnson for combining my two passions ceramics and novels.



Susan Johnson has a wonderful blog and website with many wise and illuminating ponderings about creativity, travel, motherhood, familyhood, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages and kings.............

grandma's cups

looking glass

Mason Jars, originally uploaded by Tinker*Tailor.

For a few years now I have been collecting glass jars- I guess vintage could be an exaggerated word for them but they are a great thing to collect as they are very cheap and very useful. The most ordinary things take on a strange beauty encased in glass.

(The lovely photo of the Mason Jars are unfortunately not mine, they are from Flickr)

Handmade - the heirlooms of the future

I recently heard about "The Compact" an environmental movement that started in San Francisco . In order to combat rampant consumerism Compacters vow that for one year they will not buy anything new.

The Compacter's blog is full of interesting issues about consumerism, from the ethics of having pets to questions of shipping secondhand goods across the country versus buying local. I think these are really hard questions and often wonder how does craft and in particular making pots fit into the ethos of consumerism?


Consumers are my bread and butter- if it wasn't for people wanting beautiful, handmade things I wouldn't be able to pursue my profession and put my rather specialized skills to use. I think all craft guerillas should espouse a craft guerilla version of compacting- buying household goods and presents handmade locally rather than dropping in to Ikea or a department store. If everyone replaced their broken coffee cups with locally produced ware and bought their wedding gifts from local jewellers , local economies would benefit . You would save money on petrol, and add to your local skills and "creative capital".

What can we call the movement to buy local, handmade products and shun foreign imported ones? Rather than "Compacting " I see this movement as an expansion, a connection with real people, not factories, a way to appreciate the time it takes to create the things we use everyday. Thoughtful consumerism.

I love handmade things and mostly try to support those I know and who live locally, but supporting interstate and international handmakers is also important. I think the main thing is to buy infrequently and for posterity. Handmade items are the heirlooms of the future.

Absolutley beautiful handprinted fabric by Australian artist Julie Patterson for her company "Cloth". Based in Sydney.

A cup of tea

Today's post is on one of my favourite things
A cup of tea. I've often thought that if I made a map of where I walk in the kitchen as I make a cup of tea that the path I move across the floor and trace through the air with the teaspoon as I put the tea in the pot would move in exactly the same line through the air every day. Making tea is the most prosaic of rituals and that's why I believe it is so comforting.
Bethan Laura Wood from the UK has encapsulated the gradual, slow comfort of tea drinking in her "Stain"cups. Through use they reveal their essential place in the tea drinkers life. The act of drinking deepening their connection with both the artist and the ritual.






PS. Thanks Blueberry Fool

what holds us together

I discovered these great things at Origin Craft Fair in London. Unfortunately I did not go there but they have such an exciting website I felt like I was browsing stalls from my very own home in my pyjamas and cardigan.

Julie Haslam creates Domestic Bliss with her range of tea towels aprons and other linen things. I love the recipes







...but thought I'd also include the shopping list for a very special collector I know ...







Claire Coles stitches things. Wallpaper, cups and saucers and tables. Her art is fun and suprising but also makes me contemplate the world we live in, what holds us together. Somehow I don't find a stitched table incongruous but tender and touching.