Our big, exciting news is that we have been awarded a grant from the Arts Council of Wales to develop our “cylindrical forms”.
We made our first cylindrical forms in 2010 as an experiment to see what would happen if we removed the demands of function and invested more time into each piece. We showed the results at Origin and sold most of them.
“Five Sketches” which sold at Origin 2010
The cylinders have been gradually evolving since then and we were delighted that Ruthin Craft Centre
invited us to show some with them last month at COLLECT.
“Circle Series” which sold at Collect 2012
The grant will allow us to take time away from making our standard functional work and concentrate on the cylinders.
The cylinders have clearly been well received but they have been fraught with technical problems. Only about half of our output has been successful – making them barely viable to produce. This is the main concern that we will be addressing during our grant assisted period.
Greater technical reliability may encourage us to consider increasing scale (bigger pots aren’t necessarily
better or nicer pots), and we will be expanding our colour palette, whilst aiming to preserve the
qualities of subtlety and quietness.
We are still committed to making functional pots. The repetitive processes and demands of function
provide the foundation of our practice. But the expressive and experimental potential in the cylinders
offer what feels like the perfect counterpoint.