January Jugs & more

Gillian McMillan — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:55:45 +0000

It took most of January to get my kiln filled. My second successful cataract operation was two weeks ago today and I’m delighted that my two eyes now see the same colours, distant vision is great and in a couple more weeks I’ll get a prescription for near vision. Al and I popped in to Vancouver one day when the pervasive fog had lifted and enjoyed a little gallery hop on East 1st Ave. (Gallery Jones, Gallery Elan and Burrard Fine Arts). I collected Eric Metcalfe’s latest three painted plates so that helped to fill the kiln. I’ll show his work in a later blog. On our way home we enjoyed marvellous late Winter afternoon views from Burnaby Mountain park.

Special requests led my first pottery efforts of 2022. A Calgary friend collects my large colourful pasta-type plates and she had hoped I’d get some more made. Here are four, each using one basic slip colour which I then paint with two other colours that I think might be suitable. It’s often a surprise to see how these colour experiments turn out.

I experimented with turquoise circles on the dark blue dish, the biggest, accented with white porcelain slip. I’m pleasantly surprised with the result and so, apparently are lots of others. Facebook and Instagram followers have cheered me enormously with their enthusiastic ‘likes’ and comments. Thank you all!

On the Peacock slip-painted dish I opted to add brush-strokes of lime green and dots of Sienna pink. Nice!

There was a request for a large version of the grey rocks design. A touch of the porcelain white slip makes the rocks 3D.

The fourth dish is painted with the retro lime green and on that I added a design in a darker green slip and Marigold.

Another long-standing request was for a Harlequin Duck jug. These multi-part fellows take planning but I made wheel-thrown sections and assembled them. The actual painting, while referring to photos of real ducks, doesn’t actually take much time. I’m so lucky that D’arcy’s Redart earthenware is so forgiving, and as long as I cover the parts during the making I can take several days to complete them. In fact the odd day under plastic during the process is good. My collector can choose from two Harlequins.

The third of these became a Mallard Duck jug and he is destined to fly to England one day. I hope he has enough distinguishing features to be recognisable.

Somebody else asked me for a jugbird that was larger than usual so that it could hold at least three cups of gravy. OK! These three are painted in bold colours as requested and are not any specific bird. I wonder what people will think of the yellow one. I like it!

There’s another ‘regular’ rather than bird jug, painted in a relaxed way in greys with red underglaze accents. I do like jugs!

The latest carved box is more of a ball than an egg, but the terra sigillata finish is toasty. Next to it is a yunomi.

Finally, the real reason to get the kiln fired was to fire the snowmen that the 6-year-old grandson twins made on their last visit before school started. These pinch-pot fellows have removeable heads as lids and we chose twigs for me to glue in for arms. They’ll finally get to see them tomorrow when I will be at a TriCity Potters first ‘live’ meeting in Pitt Meadows, near their home. Great anticipation I’m told.. as the whole family recovers from Covid.

With a planned discussion of sgraffito at a TCP meeting I drew some birds on a wee vase. It was painted with my pale green slip and carved when it was leather hard.

Duck Jugs – Gillian McMillan — Rara Avis

January Jugs & more