Today I’ve heard from Vincent Massey that he has just unloaded his salt kiln and that my pots are just fine. I’m so excited – I can hardly wait until I can get them from him next week. They’ll give me more ideas for my next adventures in salt.

Now I’ll post some photos from the happy evening attending Jane Hamlyn’s opening at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre on May 11th. Al and I had taken the train up from Winchester after 2 days spent with my sister Mary and her husband John near Romsey. We walked gradually all the way to the gallery from Waterloo, first across the Hungerford Bridge to Charing Cross, into Trafalgar Square and up through Soho toTottenham Court Road. The gallery is directly across from the British Museum where my husband happily spent much of the next day. (I’ll post pics from my day at Tate Modern soon).

At 5 to 6pm. a taxi pulled up and out hopped Jane Hamlyn and her husband. Forgive me, I didn’t make a note of his name. We introduced ourselves – ‘We met in Vancouver 5 years ago, I took your making and salt-firing workshops at Shadbolt Centre etc’. While they went on in we waited a while and with permission took photos of pots by other people in the shop front. I’ll post those photos in my next blog. The Jane Hamlyn work is all displayed in the back part of the gallery where there is another door out so there’s another window for display.

I’ll insert the photos chronologically but won’t be able to have captions in the right places after a while. Just click on the photo to read its title. The abstract vessels are large!

The show ended on June 4th but I expect the gallery will feature Jane’s work indefinitely. I love the tea-pot shapes, their colour and the salty surfaces. The ‘Abstract Vessels’ are strong and striking and make a good contrast to the intricate shapes of Jane’s tea-pots. That’s all there was – the vessels and tea-pots. Lovely!

Now, as I start to sort, crop and delete over 900 photos I would like to post some very selected images – pots I’ve seen, trees, brick buildings, sculptures that are inspirational. Maybe summer will come to BC and I will want to be out in the garden. I have signed up to participate in two salt firings, Cathi Jefferson’s for Fraser Valley Potters later in June and the Shadbolt Centre’s salt/soda firing in July with Linda Doherty and Jay MacLennan so I need to get out the Plainsman clay right away.

Our travels in May took us mainly on a tour of Italy with 5 days in England first and 6 days in Berlin at the end. The fun thing for me was being able to attend the ‘private view/opening’ of Jane Hamlyn’s show at the new Contemporary Ceramics Centre in London. More on that and photos of the show and other work in that gallery later.