Partial flower mug

The question I have really is about the relative completeness of the flower, especially on the mug.  I am concerned that the flower looks too abstracted but also looks as if it is emerging from underneath the red.  The red is an inglaze and the flower is a transfer that sits on top of the glaze.  I also don’t know whether I like this in relation to the narrative of bringing the act of care to the surface.  What do you think?

The only problem with the mug is that the flower is far too big to use whole.  I could partially obscure the plate to make it similar to the mug and play with the bowl to find a similar effect.

The plate is also not conventional in that it’s centre is decorated but I don’t think I can loose the centre pattern and keep the feel of the pink strokes.

I am considering adding gold luster to this range as a simple band around the bowl and plate and down the handle of the mug.

What’s in a range? plates, mugs and bowls

Decisions about which shapes to include in the three ranges.  The following thinking…

Red (support).  Plate, bowl and mug

Green (structure).  Teapot, cup and saucer, tea plate, bowl, dinner plate

Blue (flow).  Teapot, cup and saucer and tea plate

These are for reasons of convention as much as concept.  The red range is a foundation set that can be split or bought as one. Mugs are more likely to be bought separately as well as for reasons of function and cost so the fundamentals of living are a mug, a bowl and a plate.  A tea plate, for example, doesn’t really enter the consciousness here!

Green is all inclusive.  Something pastoral and not a primary colour so it enters the every day more easily in ceramics.

Blue (my voice).  It is the colour of banking ‘uniform’, if only in navy blue.  There is a coolness and elegance about the colour blue that means it would be more of a leisurely  usage;  a more established household and a likely afternoon (loose leaf) tea taker.

MARKET LOCATION:  these need to be aimed at the luxury designer-maker buyer.  The complexity of the development (workshops and distillation) necessitates a slightly higher price bracket but the design quality needs to be high so that the role of design to ‘make life better for people’ actually happens THROUGH the concept of celebrating the work of carers.

What’s in a range? colour choices

Three days of intensive of drawing in order to address the theme of different ranges in the whole collection has brought up three ranges, flow, structure and support, using three colours, blue, red and green respectively

All the colours were chosen in part for their metaphysical meaning.  Blue, for communication (throat chakra), red for the mulhadara – root of all support, and green for the heart, the structure of how we enter in relationship in the world.

Flow is my range; no work from the Coventry carers come into this.  Blue also because it comes from Unit 10 colour uses.

Red:  support.  The imagery that was explained to me by the Carers was that red represented weddings.  This is a material commitment between two people to support each other over a lifetime.  Therefore red.

Green:  structure.  The carers were heavily influenced by the natural environment in their image-making.  The primary imagery that came from the workshops was gardening and the sun.

This green highly stylized flower was very striking for it’s structure and seemed to represent the formality of a garden, hence it’s association with ‘structure’.

My layers

This is an important cup.  In laying on the sun decal today I suddenly saw my own place in the process of this project; it made me smile to myself.

1. Foundation laid by me (green/white enamel on a manufactured body)

2. Event/relationship (sun transfers from the workshop consultation)

3. Tableau (this layer is not shown here but will be illustrations of my own making).

More echos but at the same time memory and celebration.  Private memory and subtle body.  Clarity in the surface, in the fixed image.  A vision that sets a scene to stand the test of time.

It also echos a strongly held facet of my personal philosophy; nobody can realise your vision for you but nothing worth doing is EVER done alone.  Curious.

Layers that echo

Collect 2013.  Laura Ellen Bacon was presenting in the Project Space this year and as soon as I saw her piece it revealed another echo in my project; layers.

The density of the layers that she shows with the the weave she uses has been internalised, ‘joggled about’ and cooked up to produce the notion of layers in my interpretation of surface.  It really struck me.  The impact of those two weeks was acutely felt in that simple revisiting.

It PROVES how very sensitive we are to our environments and the longevity and complexity involved in the process of embodiment that making reveals.

Bone China

BONE CHINA
The choice of shape is practical.  As few complex curves as possible makes the application of transfers much less demanding.  The choice of bone china over porcelain is personal.  There could be some technical gloss put over it in terms of it’s advantages in taking on enamels and transfers, but honestly?  The answer is deeply personal.

It echoes me.  As close to taste as you can get in terms of sensation.  It is a healing echo because it makes sense to me in it’s innate materiality.  The English body, reinvented out of necessity to survive (porcelain competition from China), turns out a altogether stronger body.  Good old Wedgwood.  The drive forward cooked up in a recipe with intention and redefined.

This brings up all sorts of questions about being ‘made’, ‘man-made’ and to what extent we are all these things.  Mine is just a really extreme example but the same questions apply to all of us in our most anxious moments.  So,what you can’t answer or were never consulted about you just accept, but Wedgwood, he had a question to answer, just like I did.  We both answere(d) it in our own way.

Of course the projection and echo back to me is the healing element that I hold dear and that is there for every artist who uses clay, distasteful as it may be to some of them who hide it in technical jargon.  Whatever floats your boat; you can’t kid everybody all the time though.  Withhold if you like.  It’s a personal thing, as I said.

Portfolio – it’s a question of presentation

I still am not sure what is meant by this word!  All that reading and yet I am none the wiser.  I know one thing, it needs to be REALLY linear.  Nobody understands any other shape narrative it seems.  Never read any James Joyce obviously!  Anyway, more to follow here, I feel sure…

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Why Coventry?

This a question that has yet to be answered.  It is something that now I am considering how to present this work must be formalised in writing.  The peripateticism of my approach to my work is significant.  I literally, ‘go for a walk’ and see what I find.  This takes quite a leap of faith but it also always serves to re-validate itself as a means of beginning a project, and in the same breathe, of demonstration of the resourcefulness and abundance that pervades the whole of life!

There are a number of things about Coventry that are of interest to me.  The industrial revolution saw it as the centre of ribbon manufacturing and Alfred Herbert founded the Herbert Gallery and Museum on the wealth of his tool-making business.  Historically it is the centre of transportation in the UK.  The Asian population were economic migrants in the 1950s who were attracted to the automotive industry there.  It is a place of transition, therefore.   It was completely re-built in post-war modernist idealism and for all it’s failings (the predominance of concrete being one) the spirit of ‘PEACE AND RECONCILIATION’ that emerged from the disaster of WWII pervades the place.

Geologically it sits on the same type of bedrock as Stoke on Trent.  It is also shaped like a bowl geologically.  The ring road acts as a kind of safe rim to the city; you can never really get lost.  Yes, the heart is a shopping centre, dominated by concrete but there is a municipal kindness and an overwhelming sense of unity in the place that sustains it.  I realise from this response that I am acutely sensitive to the heart of a place and I find fragmentation very destructive.  Perhaps this is the reason for my reaction to the Kings Cross development.

The Cathedral.  It is full of art.  Even it’s stained glass windows were a major commission for contemporary artists.  It has an international reputation for unity that is lost on the national UK population and it manages a sense of intimacy in a vast space that I cannot help but contrast with the space of the new UAL building, which is itself a whole other type of cathedral!

Comparison over, the discovery of unity and strength of purpose in the place is supported by the people I found there.  It touches me because they are open and honest about their work and honesty is something I value above nearly all things.  As makers we hold the tools to forward motion, towards improvement and progress.  Discovery of Coventry has been a very important one in the synthesis of my learning at this stage of the degree.

I need to speak to Uma about the regional density of family carers in Coventry compared to the rest of the country as it seems like a very densely packed region for carers (45 in the one group that I am working with alone).  She will know where to look I am sure.