Ceramics, day 3 (of 3)

What joy, something came out of the kiln at last! And only one crumbled ...

The finished work - and the work for the day ahead, prepared in a bit of a frenzy during the week. Many are sindamay -

And the ones that weren't ready to fire last week -

By lunchtime, most were dipped and drying, some were dripping, and the fired ones needed packing up carefully to take home, hence the cut-up plastic water bottles and shredded paper under the table -

 By the end of the day, 29 more waiting to be fired, to be collected mid-September -

Some individual pieces -

Metallic fabric inside, linen outside

Ceramic "applique"

Stitched with metal threads

Metallic beads

Metallic threads woven into silk

Machined tucks on organza, overcast with metal thread

Handstitched with metal thread

A clustering of favourites

Linking this to Off the Wall Fridays.

Poetry Thursday - Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Collosal work by Igor Mitoraj at British Museum (via)

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

- Percy Bysshe Shelley (via)


Written in 1817, anthologised in 1861 and forever afterward, the poem is - through its famous line, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings", probably Shelley's best known work. Shelley (1792-1822) might have been miffed, or surprised; no doubt he would have preferred to be remembered by one of his book-length poems, which are largely unread today. Read about its origin at economist.com/news/christmas-specials, and about contemporary travel literature luring visitors to find giant statues in the Egyptian desert, which may have inspired Shelley's image of the "vast and trunkless legs". That article offers thoughts on ruins in general, and on the contemporary Ozymandias - Napoleon - who had met his Waterloo not long before.

"heavy with historical echoes of hubris and its end" (via)

As for Ozymandias himself - the name is an alternative for Ramesses II, the Younger Memnon, ruler of Upper Egypt for 67 years in the 13th century BC, whose statue arrived at the British Museum in 1818, sparking an interest in all things Egyptian. But Shelley never saw the statue.

aka Ozymandias? (via)

Shoes, shoes...

Old shoes, new shoes

Been shoppin' - shoe shopping. The old ones are supremely comfortable, but showing signs of almost-constant wear ... not that they'll be discarded just yet. The new ones - well, don't we all love new shoes?

Which leads to thoughts of ridiculous shoes, artistic shoes, and uncomfortable shoes.

Ridiculous shoes - see more here

Strange "shoes" = art??  (via)

As for uncomfortable shoes, the ones that simply don't fit your feet, that are a bit too small or tight ... you could try to break them in (some tips are here and here and here, and elswhere) - for instance, to stretch them, put a bag of water inside the shoe and then put it in the freezer; the water will expand and hopefully so will the shoe. Another possibility is to blow-dry a pair of (thick) socks for two minutes, then put them and the shoes on and walk around the house for half an hour - the heat will soften the leather, allowing it to stretch a bit.

And then there are these -

Jika-tabi (via)

Split-toe shoes tend to look rather satanic, but might be useful for bunions, keeping the toes spread. A bunion (hallux vagus) is a deformity of the big toe joint; they run in families and are thought to be linked to wearing ill-fitting footwear. If you have a bunion, you'll know how quickly the new shoes can be deformed, never mind the effect of tightness or rubbing on the toe itself.

To end, a little more unwearable fun -

(via)

(via)

(via, where you can see flamingo shoes, and others)

Drawing Tuesday - V&A ceramics galleries

It was only a few minutes after opening time when I reached the (vast) ceramics galleries, but already the artist in residence (Amy Jane Hughes) was hard at work -

So much to see ... did you know that porcelain has a tendency to slump, as this vase shows -

This kiln-waster (Delft, 1665-70) is a spectacular disaster and I wanted to look at it closely

but immediately let myself be distracted by the reflections of the rows of teapots behind me -

and started out by warming up with some blind drawing of the shapes of these blue-and-white objects

then filling in the background of the page with elements from the decoration -

Back to the 34 plates gone so wrong, with bits of kiln furniture among the heap -

Was this all the work of one painter?

My first pencil drawing was going nowhere, so I started another on the opposite page, adding torn scraps of tissue paper to represent the unglazed clay -

A changed point of view brought the back into focus, quite quickly drawn with pen over the original attempt -

With not a lot of time left, I was looking for "something quick" and found these African pots -

A water pot from Nigeria, possibly Igbo, 1900-1924

and also from Nigeria (Bida, Nupe people) another water pot from the same era.

Elsewhere, Jo ensconced herself in the study collection -

and really got to know this dark pot (apologies for the bad photos - all that glass makes it difficult) -

using various media to get the dark shiny glaze and the reflected highlights ... not easy ...

Caryl was quite taken by this piece by Michael Flynn, "Angel/Flight" (1988)

She did two versions, first the small one, then the larger one in mere minutes - a speed made possible by the close observation earlier -

Nathalia drew a piece by Bernard Leach and Alison Britton's "Big White Jug" (see it, and six responses to it, here) -

 Sue started with the yellow Chinese roof tiles, but found it hard on the neck -

and switched to pieces at eye-level, "Blue Form" by Wouter Dam, 2004 - a piece thrown in sections -

The blue piece was just visible from where I'd been sitting, thinking how nice it would be to draw those clean white shapes rather than the chaos of that kiln-waster -

Good home needed for small lighthouses

Seen in a charity shop window

What's the collective (venereal) noun for lighthouses? There probably isn't one because they are singular occurrences... perhaps "a superfluity of lighthouses" ... an enthusiasm of lighthouses? a failsafe of lighthouses?

Or just ... a typology of lighthouses ...

Lighthouses are a dying breed: "Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and replacement by modern electronic navigational systems such as strobes." Gone, then, is the romance (or otherwise) of being a lighthouse keeper.

(later...) that elusive noun might be "consolation" ... a consolation of lighthouses ... as in the penultimate paragraph of Kathleen Jamie's essay about midwinter in Orkney at http://www.theguardian.com/books/lrb/articles/0,,1124890,00.html

Sinamay

Mostly used for hat-making, sinamay is made from abaca fibres and can be stiffened with chemicals.

The sinamay pieces I have on hand are the stiffened sort, and came from a scrap box. I'm turning them into ceramics, with a bit of rolling and stitching - and stretching; the weave along the bias-cut edges can be spread apart. When I tried dipping a small, simple tube, it didn't flop ... and "if it works, do it some more" ... but will the fancy edges keep their form?

Morning sunlight on my work table cast some exquisite shadows. (The fabric is a dusky purple.) It seems a pity to turn the airy structure into something that casts a solid shadow.

And then there are these -

with its shadow (which is which?)

enclosed forms ("handles")

How will the slip affect them?

Ceramics, day 2 (of 3)

Nothing got fired, but here we have a week's making of "textile tubes" ready to dip, and some that have hardened during the week. And one already dipped, dangling, and dripping -

The diaphanous pale shapes on the right are made of a stiffened gauze, and - I discovered - need to be several layers thick. This one disintegrated at the seam when immersed in the clay, and is being re-sewn -

 New uses for chopsticks - as dipping support contraptions, both over the slip bucket

 and to support still-wet tubes that are sitting on a puddle of slip, thereby making them into vessels -

 If they aren't drying quickly enough, they get a blast with the hair dryer.

A new departure - this linen tube is lined with metallic fabric; I suspect the inside will be black and the outside murky. The lifesavers are dried porcelain that was piped onto fabric and peeled off, in hopes that it will make a white area on the murky background. Possibly the stitches should have been much chunkier, in order to stay white. We'll see...

This lot has been sent for firing - I do hope to see some results at the next (last) class. Then comes the task of packaging up the survivors to take them home.

And these are drying out for next week -

If all goes well ("if"), there will be rather a lot to take home.