I painted a square plate with geometric shapes based on those I’d applied to the yunomi bought by Juliane Shibata. Bold it is! The underside is coated with satiny Redart terra sigillata which is a comfortable contrast to the very shiny topside, and I like the canvas texture.

The oval platter has spinning shapes which I feel echo the shape of the dish. This form will make a useful serving vessel. Unlike my visiting Raiders who paint with underglazes I always use my own brightly coloured slips. On D’Arcy’s Redart clay they look just right, especially when I also sgraffito into the clay. Just occasionally I’ll use red or orange underglaze for accents or for a Woodpecker’s head.

But I’ve recently experimented with painting my slips on to a couple of white clays just to see how that looks. The effect has possibilities but I’m in the process of testing out several clays and possibly altering some slips as the glaze/clay ‘fit’ isn’t perfect. Here are two examples of what my slips look like on white clay. The first shows the plate as it dries and the second is after the glaze firing. There is quite a difference.

On this plate I concentrated on Spring greens.

Eric Metcalfe had painted one of his favourite rimmed plates in his own studio. It is made of white Plainsman F100 clay and is painted when bone dry with black, red and turquoise underglazes.

Just for my record here are the only jugbirds from that firing. Fear not, Eclectic Gallery, a dozen more are under way!