We are enjoying having Tony Clennell as a house guest this week. He is giving several workshops at Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby.
Yesterday and today he had a group of wood-firing keeners glazing their pre-bisqued work and loading the kiln. I believe he has volunteers to start the big new wood kiln early tomorrow morning. So there’ll be 36 hours of stoking with the team, and a planned firing completion by Saturday night.
Meanwhile Tony is also giving a free (with registration) public lecture tomorrow evening 6-8pm, also at Shadbolt Centre.
On Sunday there will be a throwing workshop 10-4pm, and I think there is still room for participants on that day.
The kiln will cool for several days and then the excitement of the opening, with the work of many people to admire, will be next Wednesday. I hope to be there for that.
I don’t think we’ve ever had such an enthusiastic reaction to our pottery collection when Tony arrived here on Tuesday evening! Quickly the dining room table was full of pots, mainly Richard Batterham’s. Tony has been a long-time admirer of Leach apprentice Batterham, and told us that he actually found a couple of pieces many years ago, not in England, but at a long-closed gallery ‘The Quest’, in Victoria.
Richard Batterham is, of course, the potter I noticed first. His Durweston studio, built in 1960, is three miles away from my family home in Shroton, Dorset. So now the little Batterham mug is being used every day, and Tony had a hard time not taking his favourite, a fine wood-fired lidded jar in to show his current students at Shadbolt! Maybe I’ll find time to go to Durweston again on my next England trip and buy a little teapot for Tony.
Now it’s time to open my own cone 04 glaze kiln.
