My first blog for December.. It has taken me several weeks to make 17 jugbirds (really with Christmas in mind) and a few other pieces. The cone 04 firing went well, the slips and the one 'Radiant Red' underglaze all did their thing nicely. I chose to make a casserole with a lid, which I almost never do now, for a friend and hooray! the…
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…
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…
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…
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…