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…
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…
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…
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…
For several years the huge ceramics collection at London's Victoria & Albert Museum was not available to the public. I remember a huge, block-long series of rooms each featuring Korean, Italian, English collections - any ceramic tradition you can imagine. At last these galleries are reopened and the display has been entirely reorganized. The museum is free and not-to-be-missed! A month ago I was happy…