Collaboration with Artist Aileen Harvey
Frequently, potters have professional images taken of their work for publicity purposes. So, last year, anticipating a new body of work resulting from our Arts Council of Wales project, we budgeted for professional photography. However on deeper consideration, we realised that we wanted to continue to photograph our work ourselves and were loath to give that job to someone else and change the photographic style.
Yet we found the idea of introducing a new artistic voice into the workshop appealing, so invited Aileen to be around us and record things that caught her eye while we worked, over a period of one week in December. We chose Aileen because we liked the work she’s done in other artists’ studios and felt there was a kinship between our aesthetics. Outcomes weren’t specified and we didn’t even have a clear idea of what we would do with the resulting images, but it would be lovely if one day they were to be exhibited alongside our cylindrical forms.
View larger selection of images she took for us.
More of Aileen’s work.
Our Functional Range
Meanwhile – on a completely different note – we have resumed work on our functional range, which as well as winning us the Homes and Gardens Ceramics / Glass Designers of the Year, has been honoured with selection for the British Ceramics Biennial.
We have always thought of our work on the cylindrical forms as being the “creative engine” of our whole practice and it’s lovely to see ideas translated and trickling through. Here are a couple of examples:
We haven’t generally made cups and saucers (probably partly because we don’t use them ourselves) but this one was commissioned, and having overcome our antipathy to the idea now find ourselves positively relishing its genteel character.
And the opportunity for decoration is – for me – a delight.
The breakfast mug on the right is a prototype for a new range we’re working on called “naked” as (like the cylinders) it is made from unglazed coloured clay. The idea partly came from Wedgwood’s jasperware and we like its warm, satiny feel.
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Tilla, May 2013