Making a mug each for the volunteers on Wednesday 25 mugs.

When I volunteer at the Weald and Downland museum on Wednesdays, I talk to the bakers and have scrounged some bread and a fantastic biscuit, it dawned on me that they were using one species wood in the oven. The hazel is cut from the woodland at the top of the site it grows on chalk. This means I have a ready supply of one species ash, they didn’t mind me scooping out the ash pit and taking it home where the hard work began.

Firstly it has to be soaked in clean water and the charcoal scooped off,

this can be dried and used ,maybe next summer for a barbeque, after all the ash has been soaked the ash sinks, you then change the water a couple of times this washes it. The water drawn off is very alkaline and was used in soap back in history, fat was mixed in and possibly some bran or herbs, this was allowed to set and used for washing .

Now follows the monotonous part, passing the ash in water solution through three sieves, starting large at 40 microns to 60 then finally 100 microns this took about 4 hours.

We are not finished yet, the water has to be drawn off, the ash dried so that it can be used in glazes. Let’s hope it’s all worth it.

A woodfiring is a special event, an event that only happens every six months and is a massive investment in time, materials and skill.

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Tina lets me have space in her big and beautiful kiln, I am not properly up and running at the moment so my pots didn’t take up much space, I had a box of bisc from Croydon and the remainders from the raku firing.

The kiln had been candled over night, a thumping great log had been put in the ‘firebox’ the one that doesn’t pull as well, which was rather smokey when properly stoked. We were late on the scene at 7.30 am, Tina’s husband Graham had been up at three doing the honours. The right firebox was being stoked with chestnut only, so Tina could have one type of ash for glazes in the future, a very sweet circle of use. The day progressed with the usual pyrometer/thermocouple problems, it was when cone 8 went over that we learnt that the pyro was only a hundred degrees out, it did show us the rise though. Eventually after homemade pizza the firing was over, the crash cool and then the doors were closed and all there was to do was the dessert.

On Thursday, three days later was the grand opening, there was no brass band though. It was clear from the start that it was a very good firing , good reduction and enough heat. My jug in the flame path was a pleasant surprise, we will be using that space again for taller pots. There was lots of blue this time. My pots were all very well fired.

A whole lot of pots, the kiln is now going into hibernation and will awake again next spring.

Some potters like glazing; i am not that keen. It is a necessary process to get lovely pots. I don’t mind the alchemy, mixing it together sieving etc but the actual pouring dipping wiping gets a bit tedious .

Tina is going to fire her woodkiln soon, she sells more than me and has run out of stock, she is kindly letting me help her fill the kiln. Our big show the Bentley woodfair has been cancelled, so this load will be for Christmas . I managed to sneak in a largish jug into possibly the hottest part of the kiln directly in the path of the flame.

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We look forward to the firing .

Some people have a very creative mind and need no inspiration, I get a lot of my inspiration from the past. I have always loved history, on a recent visit to Michelham priory I saw these Sussex pots. They are glazed in treacle like glaze made with just the body clay and lead, which gives a lovely shiny iron streaked glaze, so typical of Sussex pots.

As venue 41 of the Chichester art trail , we opened our garden ( safer as Covid still stalks the highways and byways ) to visitors . Two weekends, the first weekend was wet on the Saturday, apart from that it was dry and sunny all the rest of the time. We had 92 visitors.

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On the last day we had a Raku firing , I had never used this kiln before, I had bought it from a lovely lady Bren and made sure she came along to take part. I had been telling my visitors that the last day would be special and had made pots they could glaze for a fiver. Not many turned up, but our neighbours did so they had a go too.

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It was the first time i had used the kiln so the first firing was a bit naff but the second go was much better, note to self warm up the kiln to a greater degree. I think everyone was happy with their pots, as usual it was a learning experience.

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All in all a good open studios .

FIRST GLAZE FIRING

I managed to make enough pots, in between working on the house, to fire a load of pots .I mixed up bisc and glaze, just to give me enough pots to fire at the Raku part of the open studios.

Open studios starts this Saturday, I have been clearing up and trying to make the garden more presentable. I am trying to make it mostly open air, safer in these days of covid. The organisers have been really good and given us all the stuff that is required. That is ; a PR code to scan, track and trace register and I am providing the hand gel, so should be safe. You can visit us if you wish http://www.chichesterarttrail.org, 10/11 July 17/18 July 10.30-5pm.

On Monday I glazed a load of pots that I found in a box in the stable where I store my stock, I must of made them in the old house. The kiln is already being loaded for an Autumn firing it’s so big it takes that long to fill it .

Last Friday we took a trip out to see where the power for the kiln came from, I choose my power provider that had an involvement in the Rampion windfarm off the coast where we live,

we can see it from our beach. I wanted to use clean electricity, I didn’t see birds being slaughtered by the blades and it was so quite the chug of the motors drowned out the slight noise of the rotating blades.

Hope to see you this weekend if not maybe the next, quite a few of the pots for sale will be half price .

I havn’t been doing too much making as we are still in the midst of renovations, the Museum shop had run out of bread bakers so took enough time out from renovations to make some. The pot is as you can see very simple, they have to be conditioned, which is painted with olive oil and flour shaken inside enough to coat it , as it gets used it should get better. As with all ceramic you have to be give not to give it a thermal shock.

My kiln is quite old now and has been moved around a lot in various moves, but it is luckily still working very well, I think the key to a long lasting kiln is to fire low ( not much good if you fire at stoneware temperatures) but the best stoneware is salt or woodfired. Whilst searching through boxes of pots in my stable, I found some bisque fired stoneware pots that i’d overlooked so will be glazing them for the wood firing in October ( maybe ). The kiln took approximately 30 units to fire a long bisque, with solar panels on the roof on a nice sunny day can generate 23 average , equates to one and half days generation. Our energy supplier is one of the green companies so I hope most of the electricity it took to fire the kiln was sustainable.

There are also raku pots ready to be fired at the raku firing on the last Sunday of the open studios . I have been busy getting the glazes ready, some were completely dry after 18 months of storage.

Another step towards normality after being locked up, locked down and locked in. Hope fully we will see a lot of visitors for our first Chichester art trail .

Farewell Selsdon ceramics hello Whitecoft pottery.

We moved to the coast near Bognor in West Sussex so we couldn’t continue with the old name, our new house is called Whitecroft so we went with that. Because of the move and the small fact that there has been a pandemic, I havn’t been doing too much pottery, as things eased and as I wore out the emulsion brush, I have been able to make the odd pot or two.

In the middle of the renovations we had to dig two trenches, as soon as you dig more than three inches you hit clay, I saved some of it and made a slip out of it.

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The other thing that I have done is to volunteer once a week ( wednesdays ) at the Weald and Downland living museum. I am the museum potter and have been demonstrating various type of pottery that people would have used in the houses at various times. So we have covered; money boxes, costrels, jugs. Doing the research has taught me a few things both about the language and the actual pot, people are genuinely interested , many times have I heard them say as they walk away, ‘I never knew that’.

My next venture is the Chichester art trail which has it’s very beginnings Sat 12th June when i take two pots to the exhibition and pick up all the arrows and brochures, I am venue 41, how they knew my age is anyone’s guess.www. chichesterarttrail.org search either for my name or venue41. On the last day the 18th I am going to run a raku firing where you can buy a pot for a fiver glaze it and take it home.

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