Cappadocia pots and a rug
I've spent the day unloading the bisque, waxing, glazing and reloading the kiln. Now it's drying out and I'll turn it up before I go to bed. It's been a dreadful last-day-of-November type day here in the Lower Mainland - just cold rain and misty. Luckily my kiln shed is warm and I have a radio out there.
My Turkey post today will be a selection of photos of our visit to Cappadocia's pottery village, Avanos. I half expected to bump into Katie Janyk who lives on the Sunshine Coast near Vancouver but who works in a workshop in Avanos a couple of months each year. We haven't met but she gave me some information about the pottery community there. She blogs at: http://salamanderkatie.blogspot.com/
I happened on the first pottery, chez Mumtaz, after we'd been walking around some carved-in-the-cliff houses. The young guy posed nicely for me with a pot he'd just made.
The bottles in the next photo are old ones in an antique shop - certainly Cappadocia clay. We were taken to a carpet shop of course and I fell in love with this silk one - quite priceless so a photo is enough!
Next day we were entertained at the Omurlu Ceramic workshop. A potter demonstrated throwing Cappadocia red clay on a kick wheel. Everything else featured a white clay, probably from Iznik. We saw a bowl/platter being made over a plaster mould, an array of slip-poured forms and women painstakingly painting plates. The over-the-top overglaze colour designs are the distinctive design for this workshop. In the showrooms there are expensive, probably high-fire pieces in more traditional Iznik designs and then there are hundreds of more affordable white earthenware pieces - vases, bowls, plates, jars. We chose one plate to bring home like the ones in the last photo.
The women did amazingly fine work. There isn't much light as the whole workshop is carved out of the mountain. There are no windows.
The pots on the right are ready for glaze firing.
I think I will make one of these characteristic jugs, a donut form, but it won't be decorated like this! I think terra sig would be good, or salt glaze....
I want to make one of those Ankara jugs too, shown in yesterday's blog.
Ankara, Museum of Anatolian Civilization
Hundreds of miles inland from Istanbul is the ancient city of Ankara, now Turkey's capital. The museum there was voted the best in the world in 1999! It has been adapted from an old building surrounded by Archaeological sites. Alan was of course fascinated, happily photographing the reconstruction of the earliest settlement there, with the accompanying Catalhoyok "Mother Goddess".
I enjoyed the marvellous ceramics: a large handled floor vessel, a two-headed duck, one of those ancient elegant Turkish jugs (which I certainly plan to make, if only to see if I can!) and two birds with detailed painting. All are centuries older than glaze.
And this last one is just wonderfully large!
Perhaps some of these images can be inspiration for other potters too.
Bisque loaded, gardening and cooking..
What a satisfying day! I finished slip-painting the last of my current batch of jugbirds on Friday and left them drying all day yesterday while we spent the afternoon wandering around Vancouver's East Side Culture Crawl.
So today I applied terra sigillata to the bases of the last jbs and loaded the kiln for a bisque firing overnight. I'm slightly horrified to see that I haven't fired it since September, just before we left for UK and Turkey! Now I need to get these glazed on Tuesday (the kiln takes 24 hrs to cool), out on Thursday and delivered to Granville Island on Friday, December already..
But then it was lovely to grab the chance - no snow, frost or rain, just about 7degrees C - to join Al who was raking piles of cedar needles off the lawn. I cut off all the dahlias etc that had been finished off by serious frost over the last few days. Then I cooked a large wintery beef stew which even had a parsnip in it. Gotta make good use of leftover red wine!
And finally I continued the time-consuming job of uploading to picasa some of our photos of Turkey. I'll put the link here rather than duplicating that job here. If I can find the time I'd like to continue commenting on some of the inspirations from that country - but not tonight.
If you open this link you'll see several photos of our visit to a Cappadocia pottery.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jugbird/Turkey2#
Iznik tiles
Sunday evening and I'm too tired to be putting handles on several jugbirds that are waiting for them under plastic. Morning is better for that. But I can start on publishing selected photos from our fascinating tour in Turkey.
After flying from Heathrow on October 8th we spent the next day on a whirwind tour of the most well-known and beautiful buildings in Istanbul. It was rainy. We saw the Blue Mosque, Ayasofya Museum (bigger than the Blue Mosque, which started as a Christian Basilica, was altered to be used as a mosque and in the twentieth century became a museum), Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. I'll just post photos of some of the amazing variety of Iznik tiles which cover the walls, pillars and much of the domes of these buildings. These 4 were taken in the Topkapi Palace harem buildings.
These colours and designs are being painted on pottery and tiles throughout Turkey. It was good to see the original painting and patterns before visiting the potteries in Cappadocia. Unfortunately our tour didn't take us to the actual Iznik city where I gather the clay is white.
Don Hutchinson talks to TCP
Don Hutchinson braved a cold November evening to be our guest. Members were very interested to hear his thoughts and experience on pricing. His many years of guiding college level ceramics students at Langara College have given him some useful ideas to consider when wondering why and how we work in clay. Using contributed bisque-fired bowls, a vase and a tea cup he first suggested one consider each piece carefully before glazing. He then introduced a whole range of decorating options, from underglaze with sgraffito, stain and frit mixtures, overglaze, commercial glazes and carefully tested studio-mixed glazes.
(The stain mixture is 60 frit 3124 (or other frit)/ 40 stain. Mix with water and paint over a cone 04 maiolica glaze or any higher-fire glaze).
He was delighted to see some plates brought back from Zhingdezhen by Carlene and Kay.
He finished his presentation with some real slides. They enabled him to talk about ceramic art history and enthuse about Greek terra sigillata painting, an elegant Chinese wine bottle, a Lucie Rie vase and his own drawing practice to refine his heron design.
Thank you Don, for a really interesting evening.
TriCity Potters November meeting this Weds
TriCity Potters meet on the third Wednesday of each month at Port Moody Senior Secondary School in Room 214. Do join us!
This month's presenter is Don Hutchinson, retired Langara College ceramics instructor and potter extraordinaire!
November 17, 2010 7pm
“A potter for over 35 years, Hutchinson works out of Kingsmill
Pottery on Granville Island, and his own studio, White Rabbit Pottery,
in White Rock. He learned the medium at the Vancouver School of
Art from his mentors, world-acclaimed potters Robert Weghsteen,
Heinz Laffin and Wayne Ngan.
For more than a quarter of a century Hutchinson has shared his
ceramics knowledge with hundreds of people at Vancouver’s Langara
College. Some of these students have gone on to pursue ceramics
careers in Seoul and New York.”
“When Hutchinson retired from teaching a few years ago his
colleague, Vancouver designer Gerald Formosa, remarked: “This man
has never done a day’s work in this place; everything was pure loving
and play.” He describes Hutchinson as a “sometimes biblical Adam
who is all mud and water — pure clay who knows that all the
complexity of life is in the simplicity of a bowl viewed from many
angles.”*
*(M. WHITNEY PIAGGIO wrote this for the Langara College magazine. Taken from the Langara college website)
3 more photos from England’s pottery tradition
While I was rambling around my birthplace county, Dorset, with my sister Mary, Alan took a bus up to Oxford. He always enjoys the Pitt Rivers Museum for its eclectic array of Archaeologia. In the Ashmolean Museum he photographed these two images for me. The first features work by Seth Cardew, John Maltby (I really like his sculptures. His jug here is a nice interpretation of function) and Clive Bowen. We met Clive in his Devon studio in 2005. I love his respectful take on traditional Devon slipware.
Here is another Thomas Toft platter from the late 17th century. Way to use a slip-trailer!
From our day in Stoke-on-Trent a few days later Al contributes this photo of a pottery as it was a century ago. The clay pit is right beside the factory and there go the coal-fired bottle ovens!
pots in Cambridge
We spent a day in Cambridge on Oct 6th. Our ramble through the city took us past Primavera, one of the best Fine Crafts Galleries.
We always check it out to see their latest selection of great pots. There were teapots by Walter Keeler and others. I was amused by Jennie Hale's raku birds.
The other important destination for me is the Fitzwilliam Museum. I liked the red swirly sculpture outside the entrance. Sorry, I didn't make a note of the artist.
After buying cards of Iznik tiles in the great gift shop I enjoyed the ceramic collection. Again, it focuses mainly on British pots. Here are photos of splendid slip-trailed plates, the Walter Crane Swan Vase and a startling Martin Brothers Tobacco Jar.
Two days later we flew from London to Istanbul. I'll post some images eventually.
Stoke-on-Trent
Alan and I stayed with my cousin Gordon and his wife Eileen in Derbyshire for two days. On Monday October 4th, a lovely Autumn day, they drove us through the countryside over to Stoke-on-Trent, about an hour away. This pottery factory town used to be a dreadfully dirty industrial place where all the kilns burned coal. But since 1965 when the clean-air act was enacted things have changed. The air is clear, yes, but switching to natural gas to fire those kilns did not save the industry. Gradually more and more of the world-famous potteries have either closed or now manufacture all their wares 'off-shore'.
In previous visits we've enjoyed tours of Spode and Wedgwood factories and the Hanley Pottery Museum and Gladstone Pottery Museum. The first two are closed now. Gladstone is a highly recommended stop if you ever get to Stoke-on-Trent, with its demonstrations of all parts of pottery manufacture, intact bottle kilns, a lavatory museum (really, smell included!), super tile collection and a feeling of stepping back a century or more. It was one of the last factories to operate in original premises in 1965 and a decision was made not to tear it down. This a photo taken on our 2005 Pottery and Archaeology Tour.
We did go to the Hanley Museum again on this trip. It has a fine brick mural of local pottery history above the entrance. The work is very much like that of Medicine Hat's James Marshall. 
Downstairs there is a good collection of mainly British ceramics, giving an overview of its history. I enjoyed examples of slip-painted earthenware, much from Devon. There is an interesting stained glass window which was designed to tell the Stoke-on-Trent pottery story. 
Historic and contemporary salt-glazed pieces are shown in one case. I KEEP finding splendid Walter Keeler pots! 
Our next visit was to the Dudson Museum where the bottle kiln is the gallery. It has been in the Dudson family for 8 generations and still manufactures ware for the Travel and Catering Industry.
Here is a travelling salesman's suitcase, intended for the Canadian market. I recognised some coffee shop cups. 
Dudson Museum on the left.
Our final stop for the day was the Moorcroft Heritage Visitor Centre which incorporates one of their bottle ovens. Their familiar colourful, tube-lined ware made an impressive display. This company does have a factory nearby which one can pay to tour. They didn't allow photographs in their showroom.
Our return drive took us over the lovely Peaks District. It was good to get to know another part of rural England.
Just to acknowledge that we were staying in Derbyshire I am including a photo of my cousin's collection of Crown Derby birds. The factory is making an effort with these and some contemporary vase forms I saw in London to be relevant to 21st century collectors.
More ceramics at the V & A
Here are some more photos from the V & A Museum, taken the next day, October 2nd, when Al accompanied me there. We had spent the morning at the ever-popular Portobello Road Antique Market. There still wasn't time to see all the Ceramics, let alone any other part of this great museum.
Today's photos show shelves of English salt-glazed wine bottles, oodles of Iznik ware to prepare us for our Turkey travels, Italian Renaissance Maiolica, a marvellous big Mick Casson jug and some Bernard Leach tiles.
A tile panel that I find quite lovely was designed by William Morris and made by Poole Pottery in earthenware, slip-painted and clear-glazed. 1876
And finally I enjoyed this little 'Seabird' potpourri jar by David Ballantyne. Salt-glazed stoneware English 1962.
Two days later we headed to Derbyshire and were taken over to Stoke-on-Trent by my cousin. More tomorrow!